Are you using gratitude against you?

I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude and my relationship to it.

I lost my parents when I was young and moved-in with extended family members who were very loving and generous, but there wasn’t a lot of space for negative feelings. If I expressed something that they perceived as negative, I was reminded that I “should be grateful”. What my young mind did with that was to see gratitude as a way to push out what was unacceptable in me. This created emotional Shadows (feelings I was unable to admit I had, or feel fully).

It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that it's possible to have negative feelings about something AND feel grateful. For me, that meant learning to have grace around both: allowing space for my feelings and opinions to exist—negative or otherwise—AND, at the same time, feel grateful for my privileges.

If this resonates with you, then my invitation to you today, is to do some self-inquiry on how you’re using gratitude:
• Are you using it against yourself by putting “shoulds” around it?
• Are you using it as a way to judge your experience and make it wrong by shutting out what’s true for you?
OR,
• Are you using it to bolster your true experience so that you can hold your truth with reverence?

I hope that you have a wonderful weekend with whoever you choose to be with today.