Tis' The Season To Be Grateful For Your Pain

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In November, the focus shifts from finding the sexiest Halloween costume to showing off Thanksgiving plates. Discussions get heated under pictures of failed baked mac and cheese dishes, whether it is stuffing or dressing as the side dish, and if Patti LaBelle's pies are as good as everyone says they are. Families plan to meet after time apart and some map the run down for Black Friday shopping. With all the food shopping and Santa Christmas list-making, we all still find time to reflect on our blessings and show gratitude for what we have. Gratitude is the quality of being thankful; a person's readiness to show appreciation and to return kindness.  

We tend to question are we grateful, showing thanks for our lives. We measure it by showing appreciation towards what we have that we sometimes take for granted or forget throughout the year. We try to humble ourselves with family and friends during the ending holidays, to make up for the months before when it didn’t cross our minds. Thinking of the times we let our troubles weigh us down, we feel we should be more grateful, to find more things in our lives to be happy about, only because we feel guilty for not giving more attention to our blessings all year long. So when Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, we pass over the negatives, thinking gratitude centers on the positives.

Gratefulness doesn’t have a naughty-nice radar. It's not picky on what you can be grateful for. In a place that rains all the time, the people who live there may despise it and wish for it to go away. For someone living in the desert, though, the rain is seen as a blessing and not a bad hair day. Gratefulness, in this scenario, seems circumstantial. Years ago, an old friend and I had a dating conversation. She expressed how she wished she was more like those women that guys noticed first and wanted to date all the time. Being pointed out as one of the women she was referencing, she was shocked to hear I hated the attention. I was shy and most times didn’t want to be bothered, praying no one would look my way or see me. Many times what people find to be positive, some think otherwise.

So, I ask, are we only grateful for the positives? Is it not possible to be grateful for rainy days and no one to notice you? What about heartbreaks? Loss? Mistakes? Failure? Or pain?

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Pain helps us discover ourselves, discover our truths and talents. To only seek the positive hides our pain when we shouldn’t. Pain will always chase us down until we face it.

If we weren’t so focused on being happy, focused on nice gratitudes, then maybe we can stop ignoring our pain, let it happen, and be surprised. Have our moment of weakness, go through days of crying, feel like the world is against us. Let our pain bring us to a low that we have no other choice but to rise from. Tears become a release of heartache, anger becomes a voice for what's hidden inside us, and loneliness brings us closer to ourselves. Trust your pain and the process it is weaving you through. Trust it’s showing you what needs to be healed or known to achieve your happiness. Trust the outcome, be grateful for it all.  

Tell you now, I wouldn’t have pushed myself as hard as I have if it wasn’t for what I went through in life. Hell, The Glow Chapter was born from one of my breakable moments.

Every time I faced a problem, I found a new lesson, more to be grateful for. Each downfall unlocked a new level of belief in myself that I didn’t think was there. Each mishap brought me closer to reality in seeing the truth in what things were. I know it may sound crazy to be happy for the pain you go through, but hear me out.  

Think about the last thing that simply irritated you. For me, it was dealing with someone who's extremely entitled. Instead of regretting that encounter, I embraced the reminder of how humble I am in my life and the fact that I knew the truth--the world owes me nothing.  

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You may be single, but think of the times you were lied to, cheated, and mistreated. Be blessed for the emotional maturing that it takes to get past those. Heartbreaks make our love stronger, able to weed out the fake. Each time you love, you become more experienced at it. Leaving one relationship you, know what needs to be done in the next, what to look for in a partner, and to avoid.

Maybe you aren’t where you want to be in life. You’ve experienced a setback or disappointment in a new venture. Or you may have made a huge mistake that cost you time or brought on unforeseen consequences. Be grateful you aren’t where you need to be just yet. Know you still have more excitement and celebrations for accomplishments coming your way. Lessons and wisdom come out of mistakes. Each disappointment and sadness taught you how to overcome the downfall so the next time around you know how to handle it better.

You have no friends or lost some along the way. Think about the less time you now have worrying about who's talking behind your back or wishing bad ju-ju on you. The reduced worry about who’s sharing your secrets to your enemies. Even if you have enemies, they have brought us to a point to be strong and hold our ground, to fight for what we believe in and against what we never want to become.

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Lost a job? It was draining. A trip got canceled? More money to save. A door shut on you? Another one is always open. Gratitude doesn’t have to celebrate only the wins, it can celebrate our losses too because those losses bring us closer to who we are. Pain brings us closer to what we need. That can’t happen if we only focus on the fairytales. You might be surprised at finding more room for happiness by living in the reality that life is full of bad things too.

Gratitude is about being happy with what you have. For some, all they may have is pain and that’s okay. We don’t feel that fire to make it burning in us when we have everything, we feel that fire when we have nothing left to lose. Let that make you feel alive. You have experienced life, you are living in your truth. What breaks you helps you appreciate what makes you whole. Thank it, because when we overcome that pain is the moment we grow. And when the pain has passed, be grateful it is gone. Be grateful to have overcome it. You will feel blessed, like a survivor, and powerful.