I’ve taken a month or so off from posting due to our apartment move, but I should be back next week.
If there’s one thing that this move has taught me is that sometimes the things you fear the most (like change, for example) end up being what you need the most.
In our case, this move has come with so many positives…including a major purging of belongings that has created not only physical space, but also some much-needed headspace.
There is a certain lightness of being that releasing possessions we don’t need or use anymore has brought us.
This is just what I needed coming into Thanksgiving season. Granted there have been some unexpected and painful changes too, but I can be grateful for what we have had and enjoyed thus far.
So if you celebrate Thanksgiving, make sure to take time to consider all the things around you and, regardless of whether they’re good or bad, what they have taught you.
I’m not going to lie, gratitude can be difficult to navigate as a cancer patient.
When you’re mourning your diagnosis and trying to hold yourself together from the shock, the last thing you want is for some sunny person to tell you to think about everything you’re grateful for.
At such a time, it can be very difficult to think of anything. I, personally, felt a lot of anger, bitterness and even betrayal after I was told I had breast cancer. It wasn’t a great set of feelings to sink into, but that was my reality.
While I tried doing gratitude practices, in the beginning the process was miserable and felt “fake”. The whole notion of being grateful struck me as forced and required me to think about things I didn’t want to focus on.
Tough to be grateful? Make a list of what doesn’t suck. (Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash)
However, what helped me was making a list. It started out as a list of things about which I could say, “well, at least this didn’t happen” and slowly shifted to “well, this thing made my life easier”. It enabled me to find positives that I had otherwise overlooked.
I wasn’t grateful for getting cancer. But having bosses whose wives had survived breast cancer made it easier for them to understand what I was going through…and also to offer some useful advice (as did their wives).
I didn’t have the luxury of not working throughout treatment, but I was glad that a series of big projects had ended the previous year, so I didn’t have a huge workload waiting for me at the office. And while I really wished I could have had a full-time income, my part-time position meant that I had an easier time shifting my schedule to accommodate appointments and days off following infusions.
Additionally, it was fortunate that the region in which I live had a number of highly lauded cancer centers. And my cancer center offered free counseling by excellent therapists specifically trained to work with cancer patients.
It was also a plus that the summer during which I had my chemo infusions ended up being mild—luckily, since we didn’t have air conditioning—and my fear of enduring nausea through hot summer days never became a reality.
My list got longer and longer.
Opening the door to gratitude soothes the overwrought mind. (Photo by Pedro Ramos on Unsplash)
So little by little, I started to pick through all the things that ended up better than they could have been. I didn’t call it “gratitude” at first because I was still bitter and refused to accept that there was anything to be grateful for. But the more things that came up that made me realize how much better the situation had turned out…the easier it was to finally come around to the idea that, even in the midst of the crappiest-thing-that-could-happen, there truly were things that I could l squeeze out a bit of gratitude for.
It took time. But when I loosened my grip on bitterness, I allowed in a swell of gratefulness, so much so that it was almost overwhelming how, if I had to get cancer, if it truly had to happen, there were so many things that had gone right. I started feeling so much better emotionally.
So my advice to anyone who wants to try out that “gratitude stuff” to see why it’s so great for your mental health: be gentle, start slowly and don’t tell anyone you’re doing it. This is a private practice for you. When you finally allow yourself to zero in on those little things that aren’t so bad or are kind of fortuitous given the situation, you may find that they buoy your spirits.
That’s all it takes. Not need to rush. Let the appreciation come to you.
With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up in the United States this week, I wanted to offer you a funny little story to think about when you feel there’s little to be grateful for.
Although I work from home a lot these days, I had gone in to the office a few days ago to get some things done onsite. It was a hectic day and I ended up leaving later than I expect, and as I walked to the busstop, I was carrying more items than usual, including an umbrella for the sun, a large zippered bag for my water bottle and food I hadn’t had time to eat and held my cell phone connected to a charger in one hand. I was loaded up!
Luckily my purse is backpack-style so I didn’t need to carry it in my hands. And my office keys were on my ID badge, which hung around my neck.
On the way to the bus, I was preoccupied with things that I still needed to do and concerns about issues at home.
The bus arrived, I got on and put my belongings on the floor at my feet, burying myself in a game on my phone.
NOTHING seemed out of the ordinary, save for someone who sat down beside me and seemed to press against me a bit. But, hey, it’s the bus and there were a lot of people on so it isn’t a completely comfortable ride. That’s okay.
Besides, the guy moved to another seat as people got off on their stops.
By the time we got to my stop, I prepared to get off by collecting my items. And my heart missed a beat: my purse was not there.
I did a double-take. I looked all around my seat. Nope, no purse.
My head started to swim because it seemed obvious that someone had taken it. I rushed over to the driver and told him that I thought my purse had been stolen. He listen to my story, called the dispatch and marked the security video, explaining that I should fill out a police report and let them know the time and bus number…
My mind was a blur as I tried to remember everything that I had in my purse. (Photo by Nick Noel on Unsplash)
I dutifully wrote down his instructions but I was already thinking of the hours of work that getting my cards cancelled, obtaining a new drivers license, getting new car, apartment and mailbox keys, and everything else would require.
“And now THIS on top of everything else!” I thought to myself as I got off the bus and walked home, feeling dejected and spent.
Before calling the police department I decided to call my co-worker to check my office in case I’d somehow left my purse there.
But I knew that was hopeless. There is no way that I would have walked out of the office without putting on my backpack purse, no way that I would have not felt it on my back as I stood waiting for the bus and absolutely no way that I would not have noticed that it wasn’t there when I put all my belongings by my feet on the bus.
I was wrong.
My co-worker told me that it was on the floor under my desk.
Behold the power of mindlessness! I have no idea how I could have missed all those cues that alert me to presence or absence of my purse, especially when it’s the most important item that I carry. But I did.
Gratitude hides out in the unlikeliest of places. (Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash)
However, that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is, suddenly I did not need to call the police department, cancel my credit and debit cards, stand in line to get a new driver’s license, sit and recall everything that I had in my purse and wallet and anything else that I would have spent hours doing.
And I felt a tidal wave of gratitude wash over me, one that would have not experienced if I hadn’t spent the last 20 minutes convinced that someone had stolen one of my most important belongings.
That gratitude came out of nowhere. And it made me think.
If I could muster such a powerful feeling of thankfulness when I realized that something bad that I was sure happened actually hadn’t happened, maybe I could find a way to generate that same feeling without needing to experience the sense of doom beforehand?
In other words, I can be thankful for all the bad things that don’t happen even if there aren’t great things going on at the time.
So this Thanksgiving, my wish for you is to be able to experience sincere gratitude without having to lose your wallet and then find it.
Frantic Shanti 