Thanksgiving, Gratitude & Disappointment, Week 37 in the Time of Corona Virus

There’s no doubt that this is a Thanksgiving like no other. Many will spend Thanksgiving, if it is being spent at all, without loved ones. In a large number of cases, it will be the first holiday without someone because they died, either of Covid-19 or from other causes. It’s hard to feel thankful for these facts. We can embody gratitude for what we’ve had in the past. Or we may feel grateful for not having to be social when we’re not up to seeing anyone. However, that’s a far cry from the delight of festivities of past years.

Gratitude and its cousin, appreciation, can feel like a burden in times of fear, sadness and loss. I am all for gratitude journals, and gratitude as a tenet of living a deeply satisfying life. But we must come to this on our own terms. When Thanksgiving comes around, I find there’s a collective social desire to manufacture gratitude on top of hardship. A kind of “fake it ’til you make it” premise. I propose that we are tender with the losses and disappointments of 2020. In telling the truth of what we have and what we don’t have any more, or what we never had, we can find compassion for ourselves in these times. And if we…