Happy Thanksgiving week! I hope you are able to pause and reflect on the many ways that you are blessed. This week’s post is about why gratitude is not an annual celebration for me, rather a daily practice, and how that practice continues to grow and enrich my life.

First off, thank you for reading Critical Conversations. You allowed me the benefit of the doubt as my weekly reflections moved from self-preoccupation or delusion to insight and growth.  I have come to accept that process as messy and unpredictable. Thanks for hanging in there with me and sharing your journey as both guest contributors and as those contributing comments.

As a person in recovery, growing up in an environment where I was scared for many known and unknown reasons, I developed some habits that require me to pay attention to gratitude daily. This may or may not be your experience also.  I offer my experience, not because I think it is the same as yours, rather in the hope there might be something of value to you.

Gratitude for me is an antidote to being afraid and instinctively responding negatively to situations that trigger old fears. I have learned that there are multiple causes for negativity being a first instinct. It’s a defense mechanism to protect me from perceived harms.  For the deeper childhood-embedded fears, the supposed outcomes are exaggerated. When someone disagrees with me, my mind doesn’t say: “Oh she disagrees with me. Let’s be curious about why?” Instead, it tells me she is going to hurt me, and it may even be life-threatening. 

That kind of fear is a hard way to live. I am grateful to be on a path to reduce the voice of past hurts, and to realize in the present that no one is likely to hurt or harm me. It’s just a disagreement. 

Twice a week, I have a twenty-minute phone call with a Twelve-Step friend. We share about what’s going on in our lives, and what we are grateful for. We discuss where we are struggling, and reflect back to each other what we hear. Through the years of these calls, we’ve developed an acronym we call GAS. We regularly check our gratitude, our acceptance, and to what extent we have surrendered to a power greater than ourselves. That is the GAS that brings joy to our lives. 

Through these calls and other practices, I have come to see that when I stop thanking God for each day, I become preoccupied with some fear or worry.  Those fears and worries grow and multiply, like an octopus wrapping arms around its prey. 

It’s hard to accept things I can’t change when I’m not grateful.  Gratitude helps my brain see more clearly what is mine to do, and what isn’t. Surrender is the most radical of the Twelve Step principles from my perspective. It requires coming to believe that I am indeed powerless over most situations and other people’s behavior. And I have choices. Surrender allows me to invite faith in some power beyond me to guide me, and to feel and know more gratitude and acceptance.

Today my heart overflows with gratitude for:

My wife Geraldine and our partnership and shared commitment to learn and to grow in love. 

My children, their spouses and grandchildren and how each of them is a delight to watch grow and become loving, caring humans here to spread hope and joy in their own unique ways

My introduction at age 32 to Twelve Step programs and all the freedom and joy I have received from becoming a follower of the Twelve Step way of life. And to Bill Wilson, whose birthday is today and his wife Lois and the movement they co-created. 

My Twelve Step friends who taught me new ways to be friends and to love another and opened me up to a wider circle of friends and loved ones. 

The encouragement I’ve received to persist in writing and sharing my experiences. 

I am thankful for the opportunity to wish you a Thanksgiving, full of gratitude and a renewed commitment to be grateful every day.