The Dark Side of Gratitude

On gratitude, grief, and grumpiness

With thanksgiving rapidly approaching, I see the #grateful and #gratitude hashtags making their rounds and I have to confess: I have very mixed feelings. It’s not that gratitude isn’t important, it’s just that I see it enforced in a toxic way around this time of year as though it’s possible to dispel grief with gratitude or even that it’s possible to cover a multitude of sins with gratitude. 

A holiday that came about after indigenous people helped save the starving colonists who then turned around and stole the land and killed off the very people who had helped them is complicated to put it mildly. Focusing on gratitude and family and warm fuzzies doesn’t erase the past. 

Focusing on gratitude with an exclusion of grief feels wrong after almost two years of a global pandemic that has changed so much, stolen so much, caused so many chairs to be empty this week. 

And for me personally, trying to be grateful in the midst of yet another weird health diagnosis¹ that is proving exhausting to g…