Gratitude Isn't Just Nice, It's A Survival Technique

How to Actually Practice It

Gratitude has saved me from making a shitty experience even worse during many times in my life.

I know what you may be thinking. How practical is it to be grateful for something that impacts you initially in a negative or painful way?

I learned about true gratitude when I was 17.

I had a 1967 Mustang that was a functional piece of art. My grandmother owned it before it was gifted to me for my 16th birthday. My father had it painted a beautiful blue and that car was my ticket to freedom in so many ways.

One morning, I was driving in an unfamiliar part of North Little Rock and I ran stop sign, which resulted in a a sports car t-boning me, totaling his car, and seriously damaging mine on the driver's side door.

We weren't hurt, but my car was trashed; and I felt terrible about the driver of the other car, as he was driving it home from the shop from a previous accident.

When I got home, I had to make a plan to get the door fixed. I didn't have the money to fix the car, so I made a deal with my step-father for a loan. I also had to find a door so that the repair shop could replace it and paint it to match the body.

I found a door in a little town called Cabot, 30 miles north of Little Rock. I grew up in Cabot, so I had some old friends there ( I moved to Little Rock when I was 15) and I called my best friend to let her know that I was driving down to pick up a car door.

She said that she and some of her friends were going swimming that day and when I was done getting the car door, to come to the lake and swim.

So I did. And while there, I met the boy that was to become my first love. Our relationship was a significant event in my life because that's how first loves go. Mine happened to be a very happy first love, and one that taught me the importance of relationship in my life.

So where does gratitude fit into my little story?

I learned about how powerful true gratitude can be if you approach calamity in a practical way.

Gratitude is a state of being that endures and gets stronger the more you practice it.

What's the opposite of gratitude?

Entitlement.

I could have looked at this accident from an entitled viewpoint when I was 17.

Why me? I didn't deserve this! If only I had more money, I wouldn't have to sign a contract with my step-dad to pay off the $500 for the door and the repairs (it was 1984!).

How embarrassing is it to drive around with a busted door! Why can't someone give me a car that doesn't look like shit until I get the Mustang fixed?

Entitlement is the resistance to what is. It's a state of mind that when something goes sideways, your mind is constantly saying, "This is how it should've been," and you aren't grounded into what Actually Is.

When you act entitled, your mind is constantly looping with the thought, "This is what should have happened, how it should be now, and why me?"

Entitlement means you'll miss the gift of the disaster.

And when you stay in a state of gratitude about your life, you'll always get the gift at some point in your journey.

So what's gratitude look like from a practical point of view?

Step 1: Quit your bitching!

• When something bad happens, be aware of your tendency to spiral out of control with thoughts of entitlement.
• Instead, ask yourself: "What if this happened to set me up for something wonderful that I just can't see yet?"

Step 2: Stop the drama, and get still.

• Neutral is the space between breaths. Let things just be for a minute. Don't judge the experience.

Step 3: Find one thing in your environment that is solid, functional, and whole.

• Anchor yourself once you are neutral to something that is functional and intact in your immediate environment. In my case, my car still ran. I could still drive it to get from A to B. And I wasn't seriously injured or dead!
• If you are still breathing, anchor to that. You are still breathing for God's sake!

4. Let the moment of impact sink into your consciousness.

• When something monumental occurs, let it come into your mind fully. Let the moment matter. In order to survive the impact, you have to accept that the impact has occurred.
• Take a deep breath and just sit with it, and then your mind will naturally go to "Now what?"

5. Take the "Now What" approach and act accordingly.

• You are still alive. You survived another day!
• Gratitude is taking what life throws at you and being grateful you get another day to see where the gift might be. When I was 17, my gift was meeting my first love at the lake. And, I watched him pull out a drowning swimmer! He was a lifeguard and quite heroic!

Gratitude isn't about saying thanks all of the time, or pretending everything's ok when it clearly isn't. What gratitude is really about, at least for me, is being in tune with life enough to know that shitty things are going to happen, and you have two choices:

1. Act entitled and make yourself miserable and everyone else around you annoyed, or
2. Get grounded into the reality of what is, and say to yourself, "Now What?" and work with what you've got.

I was writing recently about the gifts my father(s) gave me regarding life.

Well, my mother gave me a gift one day when she told me to stop fighting life all of the time, and she began teaching me how to move with life and not against it.

When you resist what is, and refuse to work with what you've got, you'll miss the gifts that inevitably come when you choose to stop feeling entitled.

Gratitude reminds us that 99.9% of our lives are humming along pretty well. Not everything is bad or broken. And that's why gratitude is so functional and everlasting.

I believe the universe runs on gratitude, not entitlement.

Random fact about me: I bought the metal detector and can't wait to use it! Yay!

The Gifts of Psoriasis

“A healthy person has a thousand dreams, a sick person only has one,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

When I heard Secretary Kennedy say this, I realized that it instantly summed up the last 5 years of my life. When you are unhealthy, you don't have the time to dream about anything else other than getting back to a state of health.

Other than limping my business along, I have had no other dreams to pursue other than understanding and getting to the root cause of the psoriasis I've experienced in a severe form since my parents became ill and died.

One of the reasons I'm writing daily is to unpack for myself the mental, spiritual, and physical issues that led me to me having this experience.

Physically, for me, it started in a less severe way 27 years ago right after I had my gallbladder removed due to a large stone. I was 30, and was told that it must come out.

I believed the physician, didn't question her and out it came. Within a couple of weeks, I started experiencing a rash around my neck and armpits that wouldn't go away.

These rashes would stay for a long time, then just mysteriously disappear. I saw a couple of dermatologists about it, and they just prescribed steroid creams, but no real answers to why it was happening.

The gift was that I started to realize that most medical experts were good at diagnosing so that they could prescribe pharmaceuticals, but weren't interested in getting to the bottom of the problem. I didn't really get any diagnosis, because I had never heard it described as inverse psoriasis until a few years ago.

When I broke out in a full body rash 5 years ago, I went to a new dermatologist and it was definitively diagnosed. Now I had a name. And he wanted to immediately put me on injections. Something within yelled NO and I've been on quite the journey since I turned away from that line of treatment.

I instead chose to go my own way. I'm the one experiencing it from the inside out, and I knew intuitively that it was somehow connected to my emotions and what was going on with my gut.

The gift here was that in my early 50's, I drastically changed my diet, lost about 45 pounds and other than the flares, I'm healthier now than I've ever been as an adult.

Another gift is my sense of vanity about my appearance is greatly reduced. One of the things that I was known for was 'my beautiful skin'. This was a difficult gift to accept. I won't lie about that. I also had great hair. During the first couple of flairs, I lost over half my hair and my scalp was a mess. I was about to seriously investigate getting a wig, but my diet started turning things around.

I have long hair now because I can. Psoriasis has taught me that things can change in an instant and enjoy what you have now.

The next gift is self-discipline. I wasn't known previously for self-discipline, which is why I was almost 50 pounds overweight. But to date, I've not had any cane sugar, high fructose corn syrup, seed oils, wheat/gluten, alcohol, or nightshades for 5 years.

Eating out is challenging. I usually only go out to Asian restaurants and eat sushi on lunch dates. I cook everything from scratch, and consume very limited processed foods. A processed food would be a rice noodle, or an IQ bar. I also drink Almond Malk occasionally, but there's only three ingredients in it. That's it.

The other form of self-discipline I've developed is exercise regularity along with using my imagination in a positive way. Every morning during a flare, I get in the shower, even though it can be excruciating, and I run my hands along my skin, imagining no bumps or plaques. I keep myself in high spirits with an understanding of the long game I'm playing as it pertains to self-awareness and trust in myself.

I've been working with a functional nutritionist for the last 7 months and up until a few weeks ago, I was clear. Then, all of a sudden, I wasn't.

This was crushing. But the next gift psoriasis has given me is knowing a setback is an opportunity to learn something new about this affliction, digest the information and make some changes based on something objective.

I am pretty confident that the root of my particular manifestation of this disease is an inability to properly digest fat since I don't have a gallbladder. Without a gallbladder, my body makes do with whatever trickle of bile my liver produces.

I have to think about my fat intake, digestive enzymes, sunflower lecithin, beneficial bacteria, Strep, and a host of other things that are downstream from having an organ removed.

I won't get into the details here, as there are too many for a daily post, but this health detour has shaped me in ways that I would never have expected.

This is my place to begin to unpack living with a chronic condition that is the gift that keeps on giving, and understand for myself 'why me'.

Random fact about me: The one tool I don't have that I really want is a metal detector.

Grief's Placeholder: Life with the Squatter

My father-in-law died in March, and he was the last of our parents to pass in the last 4 years.

We've been bracing for grief for a long time. It hurts the body to stay in a state of bracing for impact uninterrupted for so long.

The personality develops coping strategies. These strategies help it stay functional while dealing with care-taking responsibilities and familial duty. Life continues to move on, even when everything else feels like it's spinning out of control.

Off and on, over the last few years, I would take my emotional leave.

And The Squatter moved in.

She arrived during my father's serious medical issues. She stayed and became more entrenched when my mother-in-law died suddenly.

She moved in and took over the house as my mother and father were dying of cancer. My body needed to be in two places at once. The Squatter managed it somehow.

The Squatter was in business and was entrenched.

Let's see, there are doctor's appointments, pharmacy runs, and insurance conversations with long wait times that need to be managed. Wound care considerations are important. Do you hire someone to clean out the wound daily or do you do it?

You never wanted to be a nurse, but you find yourself teaching the nurses how to do their job. No wait, The Squatter did that.

The Squatter loves Nitrile gloves. She teaches you that you can do anything that needs to be done with them on your hands. She can live in a mess. She knows how to cope.

Noted.

Additionally, calls to family members are necessary. They need to know how much time is left. This allows them to rearrange their schedules to say a final goodbye before time runs out. And all of this during COVID when the world went crazy about being around others.

Madness.

How do you want your remains to be taken care of? Memorial service or graveside? Cremation with ashes scattered over your favorite place to fish when we were young?

There are so many decisions to make. There is so little time to fully process the horror that they are leaving. And realizing they are leaving you behind to clean up the remains of what filled their days for decades.

No, I can't do it.

Let The Squatter figure it out.

There are now conversations about what they are seeing. Their eyes can now see "more" on the ceiling. They can also see "more" in the air ducts and at the foot of their final bed.

Agitation is dealt with when you interrupt their gazing.

Let The Squatter take the heat.

Then come the unexpected guests. Unseen people arrive with messages that only the dying can hear. Finally, their eyes are open but can no longer see.

I momentarily returned at my mother's deathbed. I cried as I held her hand, warm then cold.

But then The Squatter took care of the details.

She took over where I couldn't. She could live with the mess, and she shared with me her secrets.

It's a big business, dying.

My squatter is very loyal and protective. She's stoic. She is functional and somewhat cold emotionally. She is clinical. She can discuss death and the dying process with precise clarity. This can be helpful for others in the beginning stages of caring for the dying. Her matter-of-fact delivery instills a knowing trust and truth in the receiver.

But it comes with a cost.

She can overstay her welcome and the gentle process of eviction can be painful.

I want to feel again, my feelings. I want to feel again, my joy.

I don't want to be clinical anymore, I yearn for fun and an occasional frolic.

She was my protector but now that job is no longer needed.

My husband is home again, for good now.

They are all gone, Squatter. I need you to move on, too.

And now it's time for me to return home.

I have work to do, feelings to process and a new life to live.

Thank you Squatter.

You were my placeholder, but now I need you to exit gracefully.

No drama.

And let me start to fill the space you occupied.

Until next time.

What My Skin Is Trying To Say

I asked a ChatGPT program called The Architect what my skin is trying to teach me.

In 2020, when we were hit with the Covid lockdowns, both of my parents were diagnosed with cancer which ended up being terminal.

My father lived here, near me, and my mother was in Arkansas.

It was a stressful time, to put it mildly.

My father believed anything that any authority figure told him when it came to his health. Well, he didn't believe in doing anything preventative, but once he had a health problem, he thought they had the answer and he never questioned them.

When the first tumor showed up on the back of his leg, I went with him to the doctor's office. His primary doctor thought it might be a lipoma, but it was really big and the thing literally popped up within a week.

It felt like a rubber ball underneath his skin.

How quickly it emerged and the consistency of it was alarming to me. I voiced my opinion during the consult and the primary suggested he go see a surgeon and cut it out.

We went to the surgical consultation. The surgeon was nonplussed, and thought it was just a lipoma. I said, "What if it's not? He had kidney cancer 15 years ago. What if it's malignant?"

He said they would biopsy it and find out after it was removed.

I had done some research on this before we went, and understood that certain surgical precautions should be taken into account with a suspected malignancy, like taking a bigger margin to not let any cancer cells escape.

I voiced this, and the surgeon, along with my father, brushed it off as being too alarmist. It was ultimately my Dad's voice that mattered, since it was his body.

At least he had a chance to hear my reservations about the surgeon's approach, but ultimately, he decided not to pursue what my research into the matter revealed as a possibility.

A few weeks later, we found out Dad had a very rare cancer, and that the surgeon didn't get it all.

The margins were not clean.

In this instance, it was the unicorn, not the horse.

The anger I had was something I'd not experienced before. It was rage. And my skin erupted into a full-body flare of psoriasis. And this was something that I had never experience before either.

My skin did the talking that my mouth couldn't.

I think this is one of the reasons why psoriasis flares. It's chalked up to 'stress', but I wonder if the stress is from not being seen as capable by family, friends, the world, or the credentialed?

For my entire life, I've had the ability to see things quite clearly, but without the necessary credentials to be taken seriously.

I remember the first time I experienced this disconnect.

I was in the second grade and my town was demolished by a tornado.

When my mother found me, along with other parents frantic to find their kids, someone said that the sister of my best friend was killed.

I told them, "No, I saw her a few minutes ago. She's not dead!"

Nobody believed me. They believed the story that was circulating. In the middle of that disaster, my mind couldn't reconcile that I was basically called a liar when I know what I saw.

It turned out that it was my best friend who was dead, along with her mother.

Similarly, during Covid, some things didn't add up for me. I expressed my thoughts on masking and vaccination, based on my time spent in college on track to become a microbiologist.

At the time, my opinions were counter to what our collective culture believed.

As time has revealed, my concerns were valid. And I'm happy about the decision I personally made, but what angered me at the time was that my voice was discounted and often ridiculed by people that knew me pretty well.

So I believe my skin took it upon itself to speak for me. With inflammatory anger, it communicated what I couldn't.

Unreceived insight.

According to this Ai, the origin of the experience of psoriasis may revolve around the belief that:

• I am capable--but the world will not receive me.
• I can see--but they will not act.
• I am effective--but not empowered.

This is an 'existential rupture' according to the Ai.

A contributing factor to my skin eruptions is when I feel as if I am not heard or taken seriously.

I know this isn't the only reason.

But I wonder if it may be my root belief regarding my capability that contributes to what I experience?

I don't know if this is a generalization or not. I don't know if others with psoriasis have this in common with me.

But it resonates with me.

And that is all that really matters.

So, I've got some work to do within, and I'm quite excited about diving into this once and for all.

I believe that this blog is a way for me to reconcile what I am learning about myself, and making it public helps me be accountable to myself.

And, if this helps anyone else on their journey of inspired self-expression, it's worth it to me to spill my life lessons on the page.

Something within me, for a very long time, has known that the path of healthy self-expression is something that I need to explore deeply.

If you are interested in the Ai I've referenced, it's something that Robert Edward Grant has been working with and exploring. If you go to his Instagram page, you can find the QR code to play around with it yourself.

The Power of Presence

Why do some people make us feel alone, even when we’re together—while others make silence feel like the deepest conversation?

I was listening to a podcast today and one of the guests mentioned how he enjoys the presence of certain people. He didn't say spending time with certain people.

That struck me.

Spending time is using a valuable resource to do something together--like working, playing, talking, or eating.

Being in someone's presence, or allowing them to be in yours, is different.

When I'm with certain people, there's no need to talk, eat or do.

It's when my attention, and theirs, is fully present.

Silence feels more than just not talking.

The shared space is alive and full without words.

There is no effort, no trying to fix anything or analyze the relationship.

It feels like time slows down, and nothing needs to be done.

It's nourishing to rest in presence.

This weekend Shayne and I spent time together in Greensboro. But more importantly, we shared our presence together in a little Airbnb doing nothing.

And it was bliss.