The trouble with gratitude
My trip to the E.R. reveals a chilling alternative | gratitude vs. complacency | mom burnout
This week of Thanksgiving, I’m grateful, especially, for my health.
Let me not bury the lede: I’m healthy. All turned out well. But I had a scare, about 24 hours ago, when…
One minute I was standing my kitchen, drinking pineapple juice and talking with my husband. The next, I couldn’t breathe well. Every time I inhaled, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. I could only take shallow breaths.
“This is weird. I’m having trouble breathing.”
My husband — Mr. A, for new readers (hello and welcome!) — calmly began tending to me. He pulled up a chair, got the pulse oximeter I bought when the pandemic was starting to spread in China*, and we both tuned into what I was feeling. When things didn’t improve after a few minutes, we called 911. Three firemen showed up and said I should go to a hospital.
So Mr. A and the kiddos dropped me off at the ER, and soon a nurse took my vitals and I was waiting in a heated tent.
Diagnosis: mystery pain. My EKG, lung x-ray, bloodwork all came back normal. The weird breathing gradually reversed itself. Now I’m totally fine.
I still wonder what it was: Did I eat the wrong thing? Was it a muscle spasm? I don’t think it was stress — we were laughing seconds before the feeling hit and I have never had this before, even in very stressful moments. Were my pants too tight?
I wonder if I should have, maybe maybe, stayed home and waited it out, mostly because of the pandemic, but also because I’m not a hypochondriac, right?
I am filled with gratitude. There’s another Roxana, one in a hospital room, who is recovering from a mild heart attack or embolism. She wishes she could squeeze her warm, dense, still tiny children for the second they’ll allow it before they bounce away. She’s frightened at the thought that they might have lost one another... She is worried about what her recovery will do to her husband — how he’ll manage everything so well, but at a steep cost to his sleep and peace of mind. She is exhausted. Hospitals are so draining. She doesn’t want her parents to worry. She’s nervous, wondering if this is the start of a lifetime of weakness and hospital visits. She’s feeling lucky, grateful to be alive, glad they didn’t brush it off. But also ashamed. This is her fault. How did she end up like this? Why didn’t she take better care of herself?
And then there’s this Roxana. The one who was shown, like George Bailey or Ebeneezer Scrooge, a chilling alternative.
Obviously, I'm resolving to change some things when it comes to my health and self-care. So I never end up in an ambulance thinking, wrongly or rightly, “This is my fault. How did I end up like this?”
I’m also thinking about gratitude.
On one hand, it’s a sentiment rooted in self-study, and it provides some good to the self. By being grateful, you recognize what you have that is good, what has gone well, where you are fortunate and where your effort yielded fruit. That has many benefits.
But I’m going to rail against gratitude for a moment — and if you bear with me, I hope you’ll see why. Gratitude on its own can be self-indulgent and myopic. “I’m so grateful to be healthy.” “I appreciate living in a democracy / a place with mild winters / both.” Or, when seeing people in a different situation, people with less: “I’m lucky and grateful to have a roof, to not be living in my car, to have both my eyes,” etc. There is, sometimes (in myself I mean — I won’t project or presume to speak for anyone else) something complacent, smug and indolent about gratitude.
I’ll take a step back. About two weeks ago, I visited someone’s home as part of my work. It was a family who had very little: resources, stability, space. I left feeling grateful that I have a bedroom and a job. I felt lucky. End of story.
And then, as I drove away, a twinge of shame crept up on me, and grew. Because it felt ugly to count blessings without also trying to lift up someone else.
At the time, I decided I’d do something to help families like those. (Journalists aren’t supposed to directly help the people they interview with things like food or gifts — it risks veering into actual or perceived coercion for access, permission, compliance, etc.) Any yet, I haven’t made that move, because I’ve been thinking about what such help would look like and who it should be directed toward. And because I’ve been distracted.** And, because I haven’t. Full stop.
Yesterday, along with the health wake-up call, there came a second alarm: gratitude without action has value, but gratitude with action has more. And without action, gratitude can even be dangerous.
Gratitude can be dangerous because you might mistake the relief it brings (yay, I’m ok, things are good!) with a sense of completion. Gratitude shouldn’t always be a conclusion. Sometimes, it should be a start.
At the emergency room, if I’m merely grateful, I won’t start exercising. In life, if I’m merely grateful, I’ll take stock and appreciate. But what of it? Not saying every twinge of appreciation needs to be accompanied by a gesture of generosity, but that there’s certainly unfulfilled potential there. And sometimes, pure gratitude is everything. You narrowly avoided getting hit by a car. You crunched on leaves. You didn’t lose your job. It’s more that attitude of sustained #gratitude or #blessed or #thankful that I’m challenging.
(Maybe you’re reading this and thinking, DUH! You’re finally coming off your cloud and joining the real world! To clarify, it’s not that I never help people, donate to causes, or that I wallow in self-congratulation — I hope, at least. But I do think I tend to count my blessings, and I wonder if, as a practice, that’s enough.)
*I credit The Hot Zone and “Outbreak” for instilling in me a lifelong concern about (fine, minor obsession with) pandemics, starting in 1995. So I stocked up on some supplies years ago and got that oxygen checker when things started looking iffy last winter. Unfortunately, that impulse purchase wasn’t an overreaction. Fortunately, yesterday’s ER trip was.
** We’re in quarantine and doing school from home, after an exposure at the kids’ school. So that’s now front and center, and most other things are on the back burner. And yet, if I made time for this post, I can make time for that. (Part of me wants to do it now, mid-paragraph — donate to the food bank or adopt a family for Thanksgiving — and reassure you readers: it’s done, she has a conscience. She’s not all talk. But that’s not the point. That’s the opposite of the point: a public showing of virtue. So, I’ll figure this out on my own and not report back. Yes, it’s unsavory to be both preachy and tarnished, compromised, but here I am.)
MOM BURNOUT
On a totally different topic, I have started a research project about motherhood and burnout. Part of it involves a survey, here: momburnout.com. If you have three minutes, please consider filling it out and sharing the link with friends or online spaces where mothers might see it.
Based on the initial surveys flowing in, I sense burnout is a serious issue for moms, but it’s not something they get asked about or get to talk about much. My research and resulting writings aim to change that.
Just in case you’re up for sharing the survey link, here are some prefab tweets / Facebook posts. And thanks.
What’s the difference between regular burnout and mom/parenting burnout? Share your experiences at this 3 minute survey: momburnout.com.
We don’t talk enough about parenting and burnout. Let’s change that. Go to momburnout.com to share your experiences with a reporter who’s working on a book about burnout.
Do you think the stress and exhaustion you feel as a parent will go away after the pandemic? Share your perspective at this 3-minute survey: momburnout.com.
Are you tired, stressed or burned-out as a mom and want to talk? Have you learned to avoid burnout and have tips for other moms? A reporter is researching burnout for a book and wants to hear from mothers. Short survey at momburnout.com.
Great Expectations? The Giving Tree? In Search of Lost Time? If you could borrow one of these titles for your #parenting memoir, which would you choose? Answer at momburnout.com.
GOOD READS
ICYMI: Meghan Markle writes about her pregnancy loss and the importance of asking: “Are you OK?” in a NYT op-ed.
Time out! “Saved by the Bell” is back?! Vulture’s review.
This essay, by a writer friend, Christopher Solomon, is a complicated read about love, devotion, sacrifice and duty between husband and wife. The author’s parents make a promise to one another when they’re young and healthy, and one of them honors that promise when the other falls ill. Underneath the narrative, which is at times tender and sharp, run many important threads: the lack of good options when someone we love needs long-term, arduous care, the burdens on aging female caregivers, the shift from person to patient, the situation with nursing homes and other facilities for the aged and infirm, the role of families (adult children) in helping ailing parents, and the author’s own feelings toward his parents’ marriage.
And so I ask: Are you OK? Email me or click here to comment:
Know someone who might appreciate this post? Please consider sharing it!
Until next time,
Roxana