The Special Needs Mom Podcast
The Special Needs Mom Podcast
The Unreachable Attitude of Gratitude
In this week’s episode, we’re diving into the complexities of gratitude, especially during tough seasons. If the thought of gratitude feels like it’s being forced down your throat, don’t worry—you’re not alone, and we’re not here to push.
I share practical ways to shift your perspective and share a heartfelt quote from Francis Weller about holding both sorrow and gratitude, and how this duality can stretch and grow us.
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Website: https://www.kararyska.com/
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Hi, I'm Kara, life coach, wife and mom to four incredible and unique children. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I lacked the ability to see past the circumstances, which felt impossible. And the dreams I once had for my life and family felt destroyed. Fast forward past many years of surviving and not at all thriving, and you'll see a mom who trusts that she can handle anything that comes her way and has access to the power and confidence that once felt so lacking. I created the special needs mom podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves feeling trapped and with no one who really understands. My intention is to spark the flair of possibility. In your own life and rekindle your ability to dream. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you are a mom who feels anxious, alone, or stuck, then you are in the right place. Welcome.
Hello and welcome to the special needs mom podcast. Well, ready or not, here it is. If you're listening to this right when it releases, Thanksgiving's tomorrow I feel like we all say this every year, but it really snuck up on me. I am hosting this year. I'm really grown up. I'm a real big kid now and I am hosting some family from out of town. I'm thrilled to have them. And so it should be an adventure. Also, I don't know which I'm more thrilled about because my husband gets the whole week off of school and work, he's an assistant principal at a high school and he gets the whole week off, which means that I get to have a house husband for a week, which I think is pretty great. So here we are, we're in the season giving and gratitude and all the things. Does it ever feel? Like, gratitude is just being stuffed down your, throat, like, I just can't take anymore. I don't want to hear it, Kara. Especially, especially, especially if you are in a tough season, and I know for a lot of us. Tough seasons, maybe last a long time or come pretty frequently. So don't worry. I won't be doing any shoving. I might be doing some nudging, but we're going to have a nice short and sweet episode yes, we are going to talk about it. We're going to talk about gratitude. but some more bonus things don't leave. Before we get in to the episode I want to share a note from our sponsor which is Cozy Earth. Cozy Earth is an apparel and home goods company. So what that means is they sell the softest, the most comfortable and cute clothing. And also sheets and candles and all sorts of really incredible high quality and luxurious things. And so I'm grateful to say that they have partnered as I mentioned, and I would love for you to shop with them this season because one they're amazing products, but two also it will support the special needs mom podcast and. It'll support you because shopping for these very hard to shop for people in your family. This is the answer. So they are a luxury brand and their products will delight those in your family who are just impossible to shop for. I know I have a couple that I can think of that I'm like, okay, this, this for sure will please them in all the ways. And it'll please me because I have a 40 percent off promotion code. What I'm sharing with you, you're going to want to use code SNMPodcast. Get it? Special needs mom podcast. And all the links with the promo code are in the show notes. So click away. Okay. Now let's talk about the topic of the day. If you have been listening, Chronologically, not just poking around, which I know a lot of you do, which poke around all you want. but recently we've been talking about grief and loneliness and the lots in between, and maybe a little bit of behind the scenes about kind of how I plan out the podcast. You know, when we get to these holiday type episodes, we're like, you know, the podcast is releasing the week of Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year's, I always grapple a little bit like, okay, do I go all in with a theme in terms of like, you know, the holiday? Or do I not? Do I just kind of skip it all together. And I feel like, you know, sometimes it just gets to be too much of a good thing when everybody's talking about the same thing. And so I don't want to add to the noise. And so I've left this episode intentionally very simple and also really designed to perhaps meet you right where you're at, where you're getting maybe a little bit stuck with gratitude and this can especially apply to you if you are like, I don't want to hear any more, which you already probably stopped listening. But if you're still here and you don't want to hear any more, I want you to just feel like, okay, like we're not shoving this down your throat. We are just having a little chitty chat about this topic, which I wouldn't be talking about if I didn't genuinely think it is one of the most impactful things that you can do for yourself. Okay. let's talk a little bit about where we maybe, I guess I'll say like get stuck with gratitude or where we don't fully digest gratitude as in like, it doesn't actually, impact us. Like, so maybe we like check the mark off, like, okay, I'm grateful for this, but we don't notice an impact or a difference in our lives. So we're like, well, that, that wasn't as great as everybody said it was. So we're going to look at a couple of reasons why this Might be the case all right. First one is we don't want to be grateful for the things that we think we have to be grateful for. I think that, you know, us humans have a tendency for all or nothing thinking. black and white, all or nothing. And so we look at the totality of our life and we think, okay, we got to just be grateful. We just got to do it. We're supposed to Kara said like, we're supposed to be grateful. This is the key to all, all of my happiness. And so I have to be grateful for all these things and you're not. And so you see how you get a little stuck. like there was no way you're ever going to be thankful for parts of your life. You know, in my own life, I'm like, never going to be thankful for these things called brain tumors, never going to be thankful for some of the disabilities that my son has and will have. I don't want to be grateful for it. I will not be grateful for it. That is that, and that is okay. So I think what it requires is to do some sorting to let the things that you are not grateful for. The things you grieve, the things you hate, the things that you would change if you could and let them just stay there. That's actually, I think, where the work of, acceptance and grief come in. And we're not talking about that deeply in this episode, but that's kind of where we'll put them in the bucket. So allow those parts to be there. Again, we don't have to have this totalitarian, like all or nothing way of approaching it. We really can pick and choose. And so once we allow ourselves to do this sorting. We're going to have this other category where we can then find the things we genuinely are grateful for or want to be grateful for. This is where a little intention goes a long way. So oftentimes the things that we're not grateful for or the things that we're just simply struggling with easily pop into our minds. They might actually consume our minds almost all day. Many times a day. And so these are actually, great opportunities to just have them be the cue to consider, okay, well I'm going to go ahead and categories that, and I'm going to sort that into something I'm not grateful for, but it is a cue to actively look for and find something that you are grateful for. And so notice how, it's almost like I want you to go on like a little scavenger hunt, like, okay, you found the thing that, you know, goes there. You sorted that in the, ungrateful pile, but now the scavenger hunt is to go find something actively that you are grateful for. It doesn't have to be related. It can be something, anything. just mentioning this, because I think a lot of times we find ourselves in these patterns and breaking the pattern is actually the hardest part because we're just kind of set in our automatic ways. And so I'm giving you an opportunity to use. this cue that's very predictably going to come up quite often and to open you to the intention of the practice of gratitude. So maybe as a cue, you start to think about your insurance woes. Hmm. I mean, let's categorize those as sucky. I don't like them, don't want them. They are here. And if I start to pop into that, like, Oh my gosh, insurance is such a pain and they are just being so impossible. Just a cue. Okay. That is what it is. And can I find something right now here in this moment that I am in incredibly grateful for, like for realsies, it doesn't have to be big. I can be grateful that I have these shoes on my feet that I. Love. I don't know if they look that cute. I wear them every day, but they are so comfortable and I'm a little scared because the company is no longer selling them in women's sizes because I have very generously sized feet and it's really hard to find shoes. Okay. That just came into my mind. See, I was just grateful because I felt my feet and I was like, they feel so good. Okay. So that's the shift, right? So it's like literally find something, even in your body, on your body, near your body that you can be grateful for and have it impact you. Okay, let's go on to another point that I wanted to share. And that are places where we get stuck, perhaps, is that The things we are not grateful for or in other words the struggles We're really having are so big that they blind us to the things that we are actually grateful for The picture I have when I describe this point is almost like you walk outside on a really sunny day And the sun is so bright and so bright to the extent that you have to shut your eyes because it hurts. And so it kind of blocks out everything. Something I think about that could easily be one of these things is financial stress. Jeez Louise. That is like laundry mildew. It permeates everything and it gets all over everything and it's really hard to get out. And side note, have you guys ever used Borax to get laundry mildew out. Like I found it a few years ago, I just put a little bit in there and boom, no longer am I like trying to figure out where this thing came from. Okay. Let's get back to topic. We were talking about sun blinding you, kind of, again, just picturing these. big challenges that are so big that we kind of can't see around them. I mean, I don't think I even need to give a lot of examples. I think y'all could list a lot of them. If you think about these, areas that are just so encompassing of our whole life, that, They touch on all the different pieces. So what do we do here? Well, it's I guess a little bit of sorting as well. It's grieving the things that we need to grieve. It's allowing us to say, oh my gosh, I can barely see around that blinding bigness of that really terrible thing. And letting that be there, accepting that, acknowledging that, letting that in. And. It's the and. And the same work as I described before, it is finding even the really, really, really small things. I can't emphasize enough to actually Not minimize finding this small and maybe even like I don't know what we might label these but like a superficial I think that's what I was looking for superficial things. Like I mean as silly as my shoes, right? But this is where I think so starting in your body can be a really accessible place, particularly I think in contrast of some of our children's bodies don't do the things that our bodies do well. So even just in your own body, being grateful for your breath. your heartbeat, your ability to walk something as simple as the weather. Like maybe it's a beautiful sunny day. Maybe it's a beautiful cloudy day and you like love the clouds, but letting these things permeate and have impact on your life. Right? So what I'm looking at is really kind of fixating on the smallness of these things and just focusing on them. in appreciating them in a way that you feel grateful. It's a lovely feeling. So even if it's about something quite, you know, relatively insignificant, you get to shift the experience you're having in your body and that's the power of gratitude. Okay. Now, last area, and it's something similar to the first two. They're all interwoven, of course. Is that One of the places we get stuck is we try to push away grief with gratitude, kind of like maybe even like the opposite of some other things I've mentioned. This is where you try to make yourself thankful to cancel out what you really need to grieve. Your keyword for this in your speaking or other people's speaking is going to be at least. So again, using my son as an example, he had cancer, but at least he's alive. So. That's not gratitude, just FYI. I don't even know what I'll call it, but it's not gratitude. Yes, you could actually genuinely have gratitude that your child's alive. And I'm sure we all do. And the way that I've phrased it here is suggesting that the real opportunity is to grieve the cancer and perhaps be grateful he's alive. But I think it's the, at least it's like that justification, well, I should be happy. Cause he's alive, gotta just be grateful. And that's the piece where you can even hopefully see in my tone where it's like there's this devalidation of your actual experience. And that's the part I'm pointing to that we're trying to push away the grief or the actual experience that you're having and cover it up with gratitude. I feel like I do that like fake voice really good. Okay. I'm making myself laugh. There's a quote I want to read, on this and it's by Francis Weller. It's in the book called the wild edge of sorrow. Okay. Here's the quote. The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand. and gratitude in the other, and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That's how much gratitude I can give. It's a good quote. And so this, kind of image or this picture that he's described, I think is this embracing, I almost picture like someone like Spread with their arms out, embracing, like hugging this thing that is so big, the full spectrum holding all of your sorrows and losses and your gifts and the gratitudes in the other honoring them both as equals that support one another rather than cancel one another out. That's essentially, what Francis is saying is a mature person. All right, we're going to wrap there. So take any little bitty aspect of this, go apply it. I like to even use the terminology of go for 1 percent more gratitude and feel the shift in your body. And I think the good news here is gratitude is contagious. Like once you get a little, it's easier to get a little bit more and maybe even give a little bit. And one thing I do want to mention before I close out the episode is that, I do have a coaching community. I mean, I try to mention it on every episode. I think in my mind, I feel like I'm shouting about it, but then, I find that people don't know about it. So I'm like, I gotta be a little louder. And so it's called Pathway to Peace Coaching Community. And we are a community. We are a group of moms. I am their fearless leader and we huddle together. quite literally, I mean, actually not literally like, but we like meet, you know what I'm saying? And it's a place to be seen, to be accepted, to be known, and you know, to be coached and to be in community clearly. It's one designed for busy moms, like for moms that don't have a lot of margins. So like, it's not going to ask you to You know, go sign up to get something like your master's degree. No, it's designed for you Also, I've made it as financially accessible as I can figure out how I just really know that that's really important to me And I feel like I've done a really good job with that. So don't cut yourself short Take a little step and just get more information so you can find more information In the show notes via the links. Okay, well, with that, I'm grateful for y'all and we'll see you on the next episode.