Holding it Together By Finding Gratitude

"Anyone can give up - it is the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone around you would expect you to fall apart, now that is true strength." ~ Chris Bradford, The Way of the Sword

Our national day of thanks is upon us although you wouldn't know it. I defy any advertiser - that isn't a vendor of turkeys and such - to develop a campaign around Thanksgiving instead of leapfrogging the mythic Pilgrim tribute to rocket us directly into the other holidays of Christmas and Hanukkah (with apologies to those who celebrate Saturnalia, Solstice and Festivus, etc.). How many of us have seen the eye rolls at the Thanksgiving table if we would have the audacity to ask everyone to state just ... one ... thing they are thankful for. It's as if gratitude is something that has been lost in our culture.

Or do we all feel unworthy of being thankful?

Parents of addicts and addicts in recovery understandably find it hard to seek the joyous vistas that might be over the horizon if we would just take those few extra steps along the pathway of our parental recovery. There is so much shit and other barriers in our way we can come to believe there is no way out of the muck, the negativity and darkness in which The Addiction would like us to dwell indefinitely. Our children have found that place and reluctantly remain, joyless, seemingly incapable of finding any gratitude or sense of thankfulness in their lives.

But in order to hold it together in our lives, our workplace and for the other family members who are watching where we are on our life journeys we MUST find the gratitude and know there are things to be thankful for. Sometimes we have to dig deep, even if simply acknowledging a blue sky after a long stretch of rainfall. We can find thanks even in the darkness - where there's life there's hope is an Al-Anon slogan that has kept me grateful in times of personal despair.

I've written before to put in writing three daily gratitudes, even if they seem inconsequential - "beauty all around", "Friday" and the names of family members are frequent flyers in my little gratitude notebook.

Finding gratitude and thankfulness is a natural way to keep moving, to continue our journey to fulfillment, to saying "No!" to The Addiction while loving our children with our hearts, minds and souls. It is our quickest path to a life that may now seem foreign and unattainable, but the life we know we can achieve that will show our children they too are worthy of the same.

Take that first step. Be grateful for what you have right now. Hey, it's the weekend after all - that's one! Write it down.

Happy Thanksgiving.

. . .  keep coming back

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is awaiting us. ... The old skin has to be shed before the new one is to come." ~ Joseph Campbell