Fortunately, I ususally (but not always) overcome pre-conceived notions, and if one more person tells me “someday I’ll be grateful to look so young” I’ll lose it! I’m 48 and my youthfulness has cost me FAR more than it ever was a benefit.

I’ve had amazingly bizarre and horrible illnesses, been abandoned by my family (due to THEIR issues: alcoholism, jealousy, “my not playing the game”). I’ve been hospitalized for depression, and have had dozens of surgeries for ailments that for years were explained as “being in my head”. Until very recently, I lived in daily fear of homelessness and would literally go hungry for weeks at a time as my employer/s didn’t or couldn’t pay me. My husband, completely out of the blue, left me, and as we worked at the same company, went over my head and used the “it would hurt morale for us both to work here” to have me “not fired but let go”, so suddenly I am without a job just as the job market plummeted. Car accidents, weird illnesses, abusive family and friends, sudden poverty, mental illness on top of plenty of “environmental factors explaining reactionary depression and anxiety”.

Then one day, at the suggestion of someone else who I trusted, perhaps the ONLY person I trusted at that time, (and believe me I scoffed BIG TIME at her idead at the time), I eventually allowed myself, with her guidance, to be grateful that RIGHT NOW (right then), that very instant, I was NOT in excruciating pain, had a roof (albeit leaking) over my head, and had eaten. It had been years since I’d been abused and/or exploited and had had wonderful people devoting their time to helping me heal, so I wasn’t curled up hiding in a closet, under a bed, in my bathtub. And, even though I wasn’t sure from day to week how I’d feed him (the church and neighbors increasingly helped out as I increasingly allowed them to) I had (and still have) a magnificent dog. Suddenly I was SUFFUSED with gratitude. Just for that instant in time. Not about all the things I’d lost (including my house due to my sister squatting there and not paying rent), cars (due to friends of friends taking advantage of me in my dire illness with bogus bartering), decades of my life, reputation, self-esteem, privacy, confidence, to con-people, users, manipulators and addicts preying on my vulnerability, etc.). In that moment I was not thinking that next week the city might take my leaking house (for which I’d paid to have repaired by the carpenters who never finished and just disappeared), not thinking about that I might be hungry for four or five more days as any food I got gobble up or I’d give to my dog, not even thinking that the RIGHT thing to do would be to give UP my dog.

But just being in a “house” (no electricity, no phone, about to move into a tent, in MAINE;, warm, food in my belly, a patient, wise non-judgemental person nurturing me. I began noticing *things*; nicknacks that’d been my grandmothers, a gorgeous view (that I might not have tomorrow or next week or next year, but I had it Right Then), my talents which I hadn’t had an opportunity to make use of but which Were Mine for when I COULD shake off the “riff-raff”. I experience gratitude, and started a gratitude journal. It was slow and hard at first to come up with anything, like training your brain. I was grateful that it had been a warm sunny day. I was grateful that I’d seen a cardnal. I was grateful that people were friendly to me as I walked down the street. I was grateful that the church gave me a voucher for heating oil. I was grateful that I found bag of dried beans in the back of my cupboard, had the energy to soak’em over night and cook’em up, brown sugar, garlic and onions given to me by a neighbor when I asked. It became easier. Boom, I came down with MISERABLE virus (due to immunosuppressant medicines) and almost died on the way to the ER. For 2 1/2 years I lived with daily migraines and puking and truly don’t know how I survived, but, I knew I WANTED to survive. My pastor visited me, other people visited me, someone washed my hair for me, some people walked my dog, including one woman who turned around and demanded payment–the “evil” is always out there! But just a few months ago the last of the virus left my system, and I can walk and sit up and stand up with out fear of the excruciating pain and projectile (and hours long) vomiting. And, by God, I am grateful! I know how you feel, and I felt it too. But start reaaaallly small, and it will grow, and why push away moments of happiness, if such moments are possible?

Good luck, Mary Ann. I pray you can have the epiphany I had. Obviously only you know your losses and pains, but there are tiny moments that CAN be beautiful and are worth celebrating….

But I fear sometimes that forcing gratitude when we’re not feeling it can have the dangerous effect of making people feel guilty, which only adds to their pain. Plus, sometimes in a person’s life, the glass is truly nearly, if not entirely, empty, and it can be healthier to just accept the fact that life can often be grossly unfair.

I suppose for the negative person, this column is great advice. But for the positive person who’s lost profoundly, a gratitude list feels like a cruel exercise. Really really bad things happen to good people all the time, and trust me, a gratitude list only heightens the pain of what has gone terribly awry.

Well written essay, of course, and all good points, but I wish life could be this easy.