This week's article was inspired by the work that my good friend and fellow writer, Ali Alderman, has been doing on gratitude on her blog, The Ardent Optimist. She is doing a twelve-month 'gratitude series' that highlights and embraces the things that give her life joy & peace. Her grace and tight hugs have made my days brighter - and her writing is, simply put, breathtaking. Check out her gratitude series here. 

Surprisingly, I haven’t written much about gratitude. I speak endless volumes about empathy and courage, compassion and bravery, and shame and rejection. But where does gratitude fit into these turbulent conversations?

Vulnerability and gratitude are wrapped up in each other’s arms, swaying together in an intimate embrace. To discuss one without the other would be a fallacious undertaking – so let’s talk about them in the context of each other. I want to create some space in this dialogue to honor and appreciate the things that have molded, shaped, hurt, and healed us.

I am intensely grateful for my ability to feel, and to feel so deeply. I cry all the time – and I am so thankful every day for how my heart isn’t afraid to weep in tender moments of deep sadness or pain.  

Conversely, I am often flooded in intoxicatingly sweet joy. Some may curse their capacity to engage in human emotion so intensely; it can easily be considered a burden to feel and so authentically. It often means people like me can be easily hurt. Sensitive, dreamy, empathetic, and gentle – I feel vulnerable most of the time. This can sound like I am held captive by the way I feel, overpowered by the wide spectrum of feelings that navigate me through my day. There are days when I feel like that statement is true and I feel overwhelmed by the sheer weight of feeling.

Most of the time, however, I am quietly centered in something deeper than my own external emotional landscape. 

My being is concentrated in deep understanding – understanding of my own heart and the hearts of those around me. This feeling of deep understanding is one of my most intimate and deep-seated hallmarks of love and appreciation. I don’t just wake up each day and instantly understand the delicate intricacies of the world around me – I don’t think anyone has the capacity to do that.

Understanding takes willingness to sit in the ambiguity and the mess, patiently being okay with the unknown. 

What I’ve noticed after many years of sitting in the mess and feeling deeply absorbed into the complicated way we connect to each other is that I often feel most vulnerable when I feel most grateful. This is where the notion of gratitude slips to the surface. Feeling grateful shows us that we have something to lose. Let me say that again.

Feeling grateful shows us that we have something to lose. 

And that is beyond terrifying. When I look at my brother as we drive home for the weekend, I am always flooded with intense appreciation for the man he is becoming. I am so grateful for the way that he laughs genuinely and loves wholeheartedly. But as he grows up and enters into new relationships, I’m often paralyzed by fear with how I could lose that deep connection to him, and I feel vulnerable when I allow myself the space to appreciate exactly how much he means to me.

Within gratitude is hidden vulnerability – but being able to recognize this can help us draw our loved ones closer, rather than pushing them away for fear of being hurt. 

The things that have hurt or healed me are what I hold closest to my heart and the most important to be grateful for.

I’m grateful for the fact that I make mistakes – and for the fact that I can ask for forgiveness. For the people that broke my heart, and for the people that healed it. For grief so heavy that it knocked me to my knees, and for the many moments of laughter afterwards. For seasons of love that turned my world upside down, and for walking through life solo for a while. For my family. For myself. For loud laughter, flushed cheeks, naps that make you even more sleepy when you wake up, bright sun, hugs that makes you cry, poetry that makes you cry harder, the color yellow, lazy Sundays, and connections with strangers on the Lightrail. 

All of these moments of inexplicable gratitude have revealed themselves in the gentle peacefulness of May. April was a month of getting my butt kicked. It felt heavy with work and saturated with exhaustion. It was a joyful month, full of website launches and late hours at work, but it was a long, hard, thirty-day marathon. 

May, however, has been different. May has been the month of quiet pride. I’m able to lean back and enjoy the sunlight between the trees. The month of turning nineteen and red-light kisses, of being able to hold what I love loosely in my hands and appreciate all of it in its indescribable loveliness.

May has been the month of leaning into the vulnerable gratitude of all that I’ve built in the past year.

Take a moment to inhale the sweet sensation of people who love to love you. There are hundreds of tiny, almost unperceivable, moments of kindness and light waiting to be seen and held within your heart.

It’s time to stop fearing what we hold close to our hearts and instead, let our gratitude light up the room with magnificent, blooming, shining grace.