Gratitude and . . . Turning the Page

I have kept a personal journal since childhood – not altogether in regular fashion, but going through periods where I might write every few days, and then longer periods where it would lie fallow until I next needed it. For many years I wrote in it before bed as way to reflect on my day and my life – though this got complicated for various inter-related reasons, mostly concerning how able I was to fall asleep afterwards. For about a decade now, since a former therapist recommended it, I’ve kept a sometimes bedtime journal reserved for my gratitudes – a practice that has helped me (and many others) not only to count my blessings, but also to lay aside anxieties about the many things I cannot control, a practice definitely more conducive to sounder sleep. More recently, though – on the advice of a couple of different books about the enneagram, and after leaving a position where I had found myself unable to establish healthy boundaries around my time and work – once I’m done expressing my gratitude for home, shelter, work, loving family, our adorable dog, and the many blessings of each day, I now turn the page and make note of my needs. This practice has been truly life-changing.

My sense is that, though my own mother was resistant, the culture I was raised in was insistent that women should expect to set aside their needs – or better yet, just not have any. Our cultural myth of motherhood, especially, has been since time immemorial that women should be selfless, focusing solely on the needs of their husband and children, that their lot in life was to work tirelessly for the care and comfort of other people. I’m sure I’m not the first or only woman who carried this idea with me, resistant though I had been brought up to be, into my professional work life, first as an academic and then in congregational service.

But, as Abby Wambach has succinctly put it in Wolfpack: How to Come Together, Unleash Our Power, and Change the Game, “[w]hat keeps the pay gap in existence is not just the entitlement and complicity of men. It’s the gratitude of women.” Yes, gratitude is an important spiritual practice. For everyone. I don’t mean to deny this – and neither does Wambach. Her recommendation is: “Be grateful. But do not just be grateful. Be grateful and brave. Be grateful and ambitious. Be grateful and righteous. Be grateful and persistent. Be grateful and loud. Be grateful for what you have and demand what you deserve.”

So these days, when I journal at bedtime, I make my list of gratitudes and, when I’m done, I turn the page over and list what I most need just now. It may not surprise you to learn that my To Do list for work sometimes intrudes into that page – because yes, sometimes what I most need is to complete some task for other people. After all, my work doesn’t just make demands on my time, it also brings me good things, like food on our table and a roof over our heads – indeed, things that often appear in my gratitudes. And I am blessed beyond words to be engaged in work I find meaningful – a thing that matters to me, and that I know not everyone gets a chance at. Even so, work To Dos are not all that appear on my needs list. And often, when I contemplate what I most need just now, the list generally also includes some self-care tasks (swim, or make a doctor appointment, or take a walk on the fen), some home tasks (dust the altar, or use up the zucchini), and some creative activities (zen-doodle, or write a poem). In other words, what do I most need just now in body, mind, and spirit? In truth, I’m seldom up to demanding anything from anyone, other than myself. But over time, I am learning to ask, and to assert myself as needed. And this is progress for which I am truly grateful.