Gratitude in the dark: finding warmth when everything feels cold
Transcript
The holidays are a time of year that bring up a lot. For some they're joyful. For others painful and for many, somewhere in between.
Gratitude can feel hard when it seems like the world has taken so much and no one has just one experience of this season. It's layered, it's complex, and that's okay, but I do think it's no accident that the holidays fall during the darkest part of the year, at least here in the West. Maybe they're meant to be a kind of light.
A flicker of warmth, a reminder that we are not alone. For some, that reminder is a gift. For others, it stings.
Grief, loss, estrangement, these things don't go away just because someone hung garland over the doorway.
Some people suffer in silence. Some go numb. Some hide what's real just to get through another meal, another conversation, another day.
So if that's, you hear this: you are not doing it wrong.
Practicing gratitude. Well, it's a practice. And I'd offer that the holidays are a kind of training ground for it. A messy, emotional, beautiful, triggering training ground. Maybe you're sitting next to that uncle who brings up the news. Maybe you're dodging the, so how are you doing question. When the real answer is: "honestly, I'm barely holding it together."
And still, it's okay.
We don't always have to get gratitude right. But when we can find a little bit of it in the moment, something shifts. That deep kind of gratitude, the kind that lives in the body. That can draw laughter or tears; that's a sacred act of recognition.
Gratitude isn't just for the person or the thing you're grateful for; it's for you. Because something opens when you say this moment mattered even if it hurt, even if it was hard, even if it was fleeting.
So whether you're bouncing into the holidays filled with love and light, or dragging yourself through the fog. I hope you can touch the kind of gratitude that runs deep. In the well of gratitude. There is peace, but it can take a while to reach it, and that's okay too.
I'm grateful for you, dear listener.
That you're alive.
That you're breathing.
That you're still trying to navigate this absurd, beautiful, brutal world.
I hope truly that you laugh, that you find a moment of light, not because a commercial told you to, but because you are enough.
The light in the darkness? It's you.
And sometimes being grateful for the breath you just took is enough to begin a life fully lived and deeply loved. Be well. Take care of yourself. The world might feel cruel outside, but there's warmth within.