Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and so many of us are turning our hearts toward big, beautiful meals and the idea of gratitude.

Gratitude was my main guiding word this year. So naturally I have lots of thoughts during my very favorite holiday.

I’ve never loved Thanksgiving for the gratitude part. I loved it for the simplicity, for its ability to not add so many layers of complexity to what I am really wanting to experience: deep connection with those I love, deep enjoyment I find myself most capable of within a slower pace in life, and deep nourishment – physically and spiritually.

But something about the idea of gratitude tended to rub me the wrong way.

And I didn’t understand it until this year, as I dove into this word, allowing it to guide me, to show me, to open me to what I longed to understand.

And this is what I understand.

I resisted not the practice of gratitude, but this ever pervasive idea or sense of obligation, guilt and shame I felt around the word.

“I should be grateful.”

“You should be grateful.”

And my heart would hear those words and want to yell “No!”

And now I know why. Why I resisted what seems so true.

Because every time we feel as though we “should be” grateful, we negate the pain or hurt or struggle that we are experiencing in that moment, instead of gratitude.

We tell our tears to stop. We tell ourselves to suck it up. That others have it worse. And so who the hell are we to ache, to hurt, to need to cry, or to desire change when we have it so good.

“It could be worse, so we should be grateful.”

And in thinking that “it could be worse”, we ignore what is yearning for attention right now.

Because if someone else has it worse, we don’t deserve to have it better.

Oh, and there is a time for that!

A time to recognize our blessings, to give thanks.

And there is also a time to acknowledge our own pain, to heal our own wounds, to protect our own hearts and understand that under our ache, our pain, our frustration, our complaints…under the surface of what we’re experiencing is something within us that deserves love, that deserves attention, that deserves validation, that deserves to have its deepest needs met.

Not because we’re more deserving, not because anyone else is less.

But because we all deserve to have our needs met.

All of them.

Because that’s what that pain, that lack of gratitude is…it’s just a sign to meet a deeper, fundamental and universal need.

If there is one thing I’ve learned this year, it’s this:

I went into this year assuming that I would simply focus on the act of gratitude.

And I did. And it was good.

But it didn’t last.

Because those aches would resurface and ask with longing for the attention they needed.

And that’s when I understood that I cannot make gratitude.

I cannot make myself grateful.

Gratitude is already  - and always – there.

I simply choose to experience it by first addressing all the aches, the longings, the unmet needs, the pain I am holding within my heart and that is standing between me and the experience of gratitude.

But when I simply lean into those aches for a moment, giving them the attention they are screaming for, encircling them with compassion, examining what they are and why, and bring Light and Love to them, they ease and vanish.

And as they do I experienced the rush of gratitude. 

The gratitude that was always there.

Waiting for its turn.

But patiently, knowing that something else needed to come first.

And then gratitude had its turn.

And it enveloped me.

And I held it.

And it changed my experience of life.

And it only recedes when something bigger needs to be held for a moment.

Gratitude was - and is – the natural consequence of healing my spirit, of peeling back the layers of my painful beliefs and fears, of coming into awareness of Who I Am, and what I’m here to do.

Without those fears, there is nothing but gratitude left TO experience.

And when I experience that gratitude, it gives me the ability to not just “suck it up”, to not feel awash in my guilt or shame, but to come alive, to feel vibrant, and THEN and only then do I find myself capable of offering what I am experiencing within me to those who have the same or deeper needs.

There is no “should”…this just simply is.

When I validate and give love to my lack of gratitude, I experience gratitude naturally and then I can actually create the same in the lives of others.

And that is one equation I am so incredibly grateful for.