Grief & Gratitude This Holiday Season

Do you find yourself saying, I should be grateful; other people have it worse than I do? 

The challenge with that line of thinking is that it diminishes your experience and forces you to justify your feelings of sadness, disappointment, frustration, or even heartache. What no one else is telling you is that grief comes before gratitude. But before I tell you why, you must know that grief is not just death… not just the sad, terrible feelings.

According to the Grief Recovery Institute, “Grief is the conflicting feelings that come at the end of or change in a familiar pattern of behavior.” Thus, all change, exciting and challenging, can be grieving experiences because we are saying goodbye to what was. It also includes a loss of hopes, dreams, and expectations. Maybe you thought life would be different at this point… and you don’t love the way things are.

Grief must come before gratitude because if you ignore your true feelings and hide behind a mask of “Everything’s fine”, or “I should feel happy or grateful,” you can never truly be happy.

Why? Because that isn’t life. Life is full of twists and turns... So if you diminish your sadness, frustration, and disappointment, and even deep heartache, it prevents you from feeling deep joy, gratitude, and connection in your life.

Don’t get me wrong, gratitude is amazing! You just have to start by acknowledging your story, your truth, your experiences... in other words your grief. Otherwise, gratitude is just a box you check on your to do list. And I’m also not asking you to spend hours, weeks, months, or years… dressed in black and mourning…

I am just telling you that when you are being authentic, feeling your feelings, and acknowledging your grief, you will begin to have compassion for yourself… which allows you to have compassion for others in your life. Your heart will open to forgiveness and loving communication.

You may be thinking, “I am already loving and compassionate, and I already show others my care (and I believe you…) AND, I want to ask you this… Are you ALWAYS  kind and compassionate toward yourself? If the answer is no, then I guarantee you there is room to grow in your compassion for others… because compassion starts with self.

When you understand your story, your joy and your pain, you realize that the biggest lessons in life are learned from the greatest challenges you face. When you don’t put grief before gratitude, when you don’t honor the challenges and truth of real life, when you feel shame and diminish your feelings…Deep connection, authentic love, and abundance will be elusive. You will stay stuck in the feelings you are avoiding... like fear, resentment, disappointment, frustration and anger, and they will get louder until you pay attention.

Understanding and having gratitude for you like experience is key to moving forward in a whole new way. SO just like self-care, you must start with compassion for yourself and your story. We all deserve love and we can only receive as much love from others as we can give ourselves. 

So summing up, living life fully and experiencing deep gratitude is possible, AND the way to do this is simply by allowing yourself to feel all of your feelings and honor your story as it is as important and unique as you are.

Would you love to experience authentic happiness and success? Watch my brand new mini-masterclass to find out how to begin.