What if We Just Erase the Word Gratitude and Start Fresh?

I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude, because the more intentionally I live my life, the more clearly I can see the wall I have built that keeps out sustained contentedness. I have the feeling the key to this, the key to my often fisted heart, is saying yes to life, is feeling what people call gratitude. You can’t read about meditation or joy or a happy life without coming into contact, fairly quickly, with the concept of gratitude. It’s sort of like studying the heart in med school. Pretty soon people are going to start talking about blood.

The tricky part is that in a community that means the world to me, the community of people who were adopted, using the word gratitude can be like farting with great enthusiasm in a crowded elevator.

Why, exactly, are many of us who were adopted so repelled by this word? The answer that I have lived with is because we are being told to be grateful for a situation—being taken in by a new family—that involved unthinkable loss for everyone involved (the adoptive parents don’t get to have a child of “their own”, the birth parents don’t get to have a child of “their own”, the adopted person is separated from their culture, their history, and their biological family into a world that isn’t yet willing to address the trauma in a structured and informed manner.)

I get that. I live that. But what if I want to feel gratitude so I can feel like a real person who is getting to play a full hand of cards at the dealer’s table? If gratitude, as so many great leaders teach, bring a more fulfilled life, how can I refuse to play the game of feeling what others tell me I should feel and still have a wonderful life?

I looked up the definition of gratitude: thankfulness, thanks, appreciation, recognition, acknowledgement, hat tip, great regard, respect, sense of obligation, indebtedness.

Oh. That stings: sense of obligation, indebtedness.

You should be grateful then could be translated into You owe me.

You should be grateful then could be translated into Because we adopted you, because we paid money for you and pay money to keep you alive, You are ours. Your life is ours. You do not have the right to have great regard for yourself because you need to have it for us.

I looked up what the opposite of gratitude is and found thanklessness, ingratitude, ungratefulness, unappreciation. In college I learned not to use the term you are trying to define in the definition. This means if I’m trying to tell you what the opposite of gratitude is, I should not include the word gratitude. And what the hell kind of word is unappreciation? It’s like someone trying to say hello with a mouthful of marbles. I found this lack of specificity when it came to what isn’t gratitude interesting. Why is it so hard to name its polar opposite?

What is the enemy of gratitude came up in my search, so I clicked to see the answer: self-pity, complaining, comparing, isolation, pace, entitlement attitude, lack of sleep. Oh! My life is the enemy of gratitude!

Whoa.

I asked one of my classes to describe how they know when their body is feeling gratitude. As they read their answers that mostly focused on an open heart, freedom, spaciousness, energy, my body responded in kind. My heart bloomed, my breathing deepened. I felt at home as I listened to them talk.

How can I have more of that blooming feeling without saying, Thank you, Mother, for letting me go. Thank you, Other Mother and Father for taking me in and changing my name. Thank you, Culture, for changing my birth certificate and saying I was someone I wasn’t. Or do I have to say thank you to those things to bloom?

What if we can say, For us, gratitude is not a safe place. We need something similar but different? What if we can ask for words that fit out situations?

This is where, I believe, being a pirate of your own life comes in.

This is where, like those pirates of the Boston Tea Party, maybe we can chuck what bothers us overboard and claim what we want. What if we put gratitude in a box and throw it in the harbor? What if we focus on something else that can give us the same fully alive, bloomy feeling. Something like awe or love?

I don’t mean the kind of pirates that steal and plunder. I mean the kind of pirates that claim their own ship and steer it wherever the hell they want.

I think claiming the right to your own body and life as an adopted person can feel like an act of piracy. It can feel like stealing. And this is another reason gratitude is so complicated and hurtful.

Just because it feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad. Maybe claiming your life and body feel bad because in essence you have to go through an act of rebirth, and birth is disgusting and painful and weird.

After class, I went to a place I have hiked a couple of times in the redwoods. It’s out of the way and very pretty. I was thinking about this battle I have with feeling bloomed inside, and as I got to the parking lot, I saw a single figure standing in the middle of it.

I needed a moment to register who is was because it was not something my brain was expecting.

It was my daughter.

Oh my gosh! she yelled when she saw me, I knew you were going to be here. I just had this feeling.

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE

We hugged, heart to heart, and she went to walk with her friend and I went to walk with Bird. I’ve only been in California for three weeks, and I forget what it feels like to be surrounded by redwoods.

Oh! I said as we entered the forest without knowing I was forming the words.

AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE AWE

My bloomy heart and me and Bird kept walking.

Adoption may be in my body, but I don’t have to think about it much if I don’t want to. I don’t owe it anything. It just happened. What I do owe, I believe, is to tip my hat at life force energy as I feel it and experience it every moment. That takes a lot of focus.

A flower can’t make pickles and bloom at the same time. Blooming is a full-time job.

To feel love and awe is also, I believe, a full-time job. One with, obviously, endless benefits.

For Louise, on her birthday.