Here’s what I learned about gratitude and pain during the worst variety of heartache…

Pain + Gratitude = Less Pain.  Less Pain + Gratitude = A Thirst For More Gratitude.

I like to think that gratitude is the currency of the Cosmos.  The more I spend the richer I become.  Like everything else, being thankful is a choice, just as in choosing love over fear, or happiness over crappiness.  Consciously choosing to dwell in gratitude simply makes me feel I’m closer to the source of the Universal gift dispensary.

This perspective sounds totally do-able when the road is paved with sunshine and smiles, but when the Darth Vader of heartache pays you a visit and bad things happen to good people, suddenly the “do-able” seems bloody impossible.  Here’s what I learned about gratitude and pain during the worst variety of heartache; Divorce.

Rather than fight the sadness, the fear, the resentment, the embarrassment with a fake smile and my genetic British upper lip bravado, I chose to commit to my grieving seriously.  I fully belly flopped into my feelings and gave myself permission to fall apart like a total pro.  Intuitively I knew that unleashing the hounds of pain, anger, disappointment, ridicule, and mountains of crap-ola I had put up with, was the massive exhale that my soul was starving for, after all those years of holding it’s breath.

Thank you for failing.

When you’re faced with good, bad, and ugly, it’s often tricky focusing on the good.  We get so tempted to dwell in the darkness, the pity, the punishing shoulda, coulda woulda’s that we forget to simply congratulate ourselves on being human and that   “failing” is actually critical to succeeding.  My bad and ugly were frightening and painful, but my good was the prize that made it all worthwhile.  My own happiness was not the only one at stake.  I had a child and we both deserved gold.

Thank you “Golden Boy”.

During much of my marriage, I often felt like the passenger in the movie “Speed”, with the work of a madman at the gas pedal.  Even though you may not be in control of your breakup, you are in complete control of how to proceed from here on out.  Knowing that you can get off the bus without knowing what is going to happen next is both terrifying and spectacularly thrilling.