Grace and Gratitude

With the holidays come the obligatory reminders about gratitude. And then come the feelings of guilt, judgment, and self-reproach when one cannot feel or manufacture the gratitude that collective values expect. Deeply distrustful of one's deserving of blessings, the depressed person is dying of thirst even as they drown.

I do not make such observations out of hopeless. Rather, if there is someone you love who is dealing with depression, bipolar, or other mental illness, I offer the experience that the sole prescription of being grateful, while offered with good intent, may be insufficient and may also exacerbate the problem when presented as the only solution to arrest symptoms. Because in such a state, many are at a point where gratitude is an unnatural response, where all can be offered is “fake it until you make it."

And while struggling with gratitude can be part of the path to freedom, the struggle also takes an enormous amount of energy that some just do not have in a particular moment. And when this energy fails, there is more guilt, judgment and self-reproach, piled upon the prior wreckage.

Therefore, to go along with gratitude, the complementary medicine that is needed is grace, which can only be administered in love through patience, presence, and listening. I cling to faith that when grace and gratitude are paired together, hope is created that transcends the hateful rhetoric of a struggling mind.