Mirah’s Reflection: Gratitude!

I recently had a major pity party, sharing on Facebook how the whole world sucks right now because of COVID isolation and the divisiveness, arguing and anger all around us in addition to Mother Nature showing us dramatically and devastatingly how pissed she is. WHEW! It’s a LOT!

I thought I was doing better than many during COVID isolation, since I enjoy my solitude and am a homebody anyhow. But, when you add it all together and then add how absolutely SUCKY getting old is and that it additionally sucks exponentially to be aging alone . . .

Like many — especially many women of my baby boomer generation — we find ourselves unexpectedly alone. I am at an age when many of my peers — friends and family — have begun to die, bringing constant loss and a reminder of our ever-approaching mortality. Vast numbers of my cohorts are caretakers of elder parents or have been orphaned by their deaths.

Some of us never married. Others found that marriages made in heaven — or in the lust of youth — we thought would last forever, ended. Spouses died. Others have partners in need of being taken care of and are thus certainly not there to take care of us. Some of us never had children and many of us who do, have children who are far away geographically, politically, or just estranged: distanced emotionally for a myriad of reasons or again, need of our care-taking or help.

For many of us the most difficult moment in life is when we are at the doctor or hospital and they ask us for “next of kin” or emergency contact person. And we sit in the stunned realization of how utterly alone we are (which is different than being loney and happens even to those of us who love our solitude).

In these strange and challenging times, it doesn’t take much to trigger me into a pit if despair. I recently reached such a moment of convergence . . . of wanting (needing?) to scream ”Stop the word I want to get off!”

When I time-to-time get to these impasses in life, I either journal my feelings to help digest and process them, and/or l or reach out to friends and/or therapists who are paid to listen. This time, I shared my pity party with my friends on Facebook.

The results were incredible! I was showered with an outpouring of responses to my post on my timeline: comments, replies, PMs, emails and/or phone calls! I was overwhelmed with appreciation to have so many wonderfully caring friends and acquaintances who thanked me for speaking out and addressing what they too had been experiencing. Nearby friends invited me over and I got a call from a friend in Italy who I haven’t spoken to in years! Can you imagine? One neighbor friend and I went for a walk on a beautiful clear sun shiny day with a lovely early fall cool breeze! (How blessed I am not to be on the fire-ravaged smoke-filled west coast!)

The many replies to my post validating and acknowledging that I am not alone having had the feelings I shared either caused by COVID isolation, or by aging, or being alone — or (horrors!) all those combined — were tremendously helpful. I knew it. TV news has been reporting the uptick in depression and anxiety, sleep disturbances and the like, and which I reflected on previously. But “hearing” it again was a very helpful reminder.

I also shared my pity party (PP) with a couple of friends who are not on FB. One of them, Sue, I have known for only a few years and only gotten closer with since COVID. I reached out to her early on in the COVID isolation, as someone I knew who was also alone and we began emailing one another; sharing the ups and downs of coping with our forced isolation. Sue is sightless and someone I have always admired for her ability to cope with what all of us who are blessed with sight see as a tremendous obstacle and challenge, and the grace with which she lives a life of giving to and helping others. Sue, until her mother recently passed, was care-taker of her elderly mother, cooking etc. for her. She has always been an incredible inspiration to me. She epitomizes the fact that the best way to feel good is to “give back” and help others!

Sue replied to my PP email that she’d call and did so today. It is that phone call, that I need to share with all of you because it was utterly amazing. First we commiserated. Sue has taken a break from most social media and the depressing news.

Then, she reminded me of a practice that had somehow fallen by the wayside (and no wonder I wound up in the PP dumps!): GRATITUDE!

Friends on Facebook had talked about the importance of sunlight, and physical exercise for mind, body and soul and the lack thereof was definitely a contributing factor to my winding up in the state I was in. But gratitude is something we need to PRACTICE on a regular basis to “exercise” our spirit — to recharge our souls! Forgetting this, it’s no wonder I wound up in the toilet!

Sue shared with me that she and a friend started something a few years ago that they still continue. They email one another every day a list of 5 things they are grateful for! How amazing is that? A flower that is newly blooming in your garden, a friend who called, that your power stayed on during a storm…. You could do just 3 a day and do it just for yourself. But find some things EVERY DAY to be grateful for! I was already feeling filled with gratitude for her and being reminded that I needed to turn my focus to gratitude!

One of the things Sue is grateful for is animals: her service dog and her cats. They are a great source of joy in her life, something else that has fallen out of my life, by choice.

Then she shared another thing that brings her joy: MUSIC. Sue plays auto-harp and ukulele and had the opportunity to do so recently with a friend on her porch for hours and hours, playing all genres of music. I was reminded how after my divorce I had moved nearer to Princeton and there found a group of friends and we had music parties on a fairly regular basis with drumming, keyboard, flute and several guitars. How I missed that! How I need to get more music in my life! Singing is not suggested at this moment in time during the pandemic and safe live outdoor music events are not always easy to find. But we all have radios or music aps, music channels on our cable TVs, or YouTube. And don’t just listen. Get up, get moving, and dance to the music! Music and dance can be transformative.

If you have never attended a drumming circle, you MUST try it at least once, when we are able to do such things again. Drum circles I have attended were intense and brought me — like no other experience to a feeling of unity with the earth and every living creature on it — all with earths beating as one, in unison! A very powerful, visceral experience of oneness. And what else is more the antithesis of aloneness than oneness! (I also used to be part of a Oneness discussion group with one of the former minsters of the Princeton Unitarian Universalist Congregation).

An occasional woe-is-me day here and there is perfectly acceptable and understandable and can be cathartic. But thought and care are needed in the party planning. First, like any party, be sure it has both a start and end time. Next, compose your pity-party invitation list to be sure not to invite those who would not indulge you or worse: bring their own baggage to unpack thinking it is helpful to “share.” Try to avoid anyone who might overstay your invitation to your pity party. Rather limit invitees to those who will be supportive and empathetic, and best of all: uplifting. Just like going to the toilet, do what you need to do, and get up and on with your life. No need to dwell there. Be sure to know when it is time to blow out the candles on your pity party cake.

And so, I share with all, my reasons for gratitude today:

• My friend Sue who does not “see” in the way you and I can, yet saw very clearly and gifted me with exactly what I needed to hear: a message more healing than years of therapy!
• I am grateful for the reminder to be grateful and that gratitude, like any other skill, needs to be practiced regularly lest you lose it totally and without gratitude there is despair.
• All of my friends near and far and those I’ve never met but are members of my tribe joined by mutual values and shared struggles and the miracle of the internet and social media such as DailyStrengh and Facebook that unite us in virtual community.

There is always much to be grateful for no matter how bad a day, week or year you are having. If you are having trouble finding reasons to be grateful, do some volunteer work. Helping a fellow congregant years ago who had ALS did more to help me than I did to help him, as is so often the case with reaching out to care for others. And if you are still finding it hard to find gratitude, I share with you words of wisdom from a my dearest and most long-term friend who past a year: “If you have a roof over your head and running water, you are better off than half the world.”

The older we get the more important it is to focus on the bright side and good things in our life because, as Erica Manfred points out, some of us are not aging gracefully or well — figuratively or literally. For many of us, the list of aches and pains and serious illness worries gets longer and longer as we age as does the list of things we can no longer, or don’t want to, do. For some our “golden years” are tarnished with finances that get harder. Since all of this can lead to a downward spiral or the general blahs I experienced, focusing on what we still have to be grateful for is all the more important, as it is in times of global pandemics and social and political unrest we can too easily forget.

I stitched this quote many years ago to help me remember and keep my rudder in balance: