Building A Gratitude Practice in Turbulent Times:
Pamela Alma Weymouth, MSW, MFA
I am a native New Yorker, born to a family of cynical women. As a result I am an unlikely candidate for a gratitude practice. When my twin teenage boys head off to the skate park I go through a mental checklist of the possible tragedies that might befall them. Inside my head I hear the German babysitter who raised me saying “Watch out! You’re going to crack your head open!” While I would never share these dire predictions with my own children—I know that they feel my angst despite the yoga, the dharma talks and the years of therapy! Raising a child with a medical condition, I am primed with good reason to be always trying to protect from the next crisis. Add to that Corona Virus, Global Warming and it’s a perfect stew of worry.
My son who has Congenital Hypothyroidism often has a reaction to intense exercise: dehydration, low blood sugar, nausea. I nag him as he goes out the door, “Did you remember your water bottle? Your vitamins? Do you have your phone? Can’t you tighten your helmet strap a little bit more? Where’s your mask?” He rolls his eyes and says “Stop!”
Once the wheels on his board have screeched away I worry about the cars in the road that hit that father on the bicycle from our school. I worry about my son taking off his face-mask when he gets hot. I worry about the kids at the skate park who might breathe on him with their invisible Corona germs. I worry about him drinking out of the plastic cup from Starbucks because of the endocrine disruptors in plastics! I have a black belt in the Worry Department.
Gratitude does not come as easy—and yet I have learned that like my biceps that are now strong from paddle boarding—that gratitude is a muscle that can be built too. The Science of Happiness shows that writing down what you are grateful for can improve your resilience and your mental health. I have found that a gratitude practice has actually gotten me through more tragedies than I can count: a divorce, a broken heart, multiple ER visits, the broken egg that got slammed against the wall.
At the end of the day when I sit down and write in my journal, after I go through my list of all of my worries, I ask myself what I am grateful for. This simple practice allows me to refocus my lens on what went right. I already know what went wrong—but if I don’t stop and ask myself what went right then I often miss it. Stopping to write about or reflect on the moments I am grateful for forces me to notice them: the moment when my chihuahua mutt is curled up on my lap at the end of the day, the moment when Quinn comes in at 11pm to sneak in a hug before going back to bed, the moment when my funny and kick-ass friends tell me to stop fretting about the election and to instead come and look at the three-quarter red moon hanging over the San Francisco Bay, leaving a trail of light beneath her.
Find time for yourself each day. Can you carve out five minutes a day to write about three good things that happened each day? Even on the crappiest days there is almost always one or two good things to hold onto. Sometimes shining a light on these, can give you the strength to keep on going.
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XO Pamela
