Gratitude is not always being grateful for everything

As Thanksgiving nears, I find myself reflecting on everything I am truly grateful for, and realizing that gratitude rarely stands alone. Often, beneath the surface of what we cherish most lies a history of sacrifice, loss, or pain. Gratitude and sacrifice are more intertwined than we like to admit.

I am profoundly grateful for my family and their health, something so many people can no longer say in today’s world. That gratefulness is real. It is grounding. It is precious. But I also know that behind it sits a mountain of sacrifice. As a mom, I give of myself every single day, my time, my energy, my resources, my body, my mental health. Motherhood is a privilege, yes. But privilege doesn’t erase pain.

For me, becoming a mother wasn’t wrapped in joy from the start. My birth story was traumatic. My early postpartum days were marked by shadows, by a grief that felt out of place in a season that was “supposed” to be full of bliss. And even now, as I sit in my joy—real, earned, abundant joy—I still carry the echoes of the anguish that once swallowed me whole.

People love to remind you, “Well, at least you’re a mom. At least you have a good life.” And while that may be true, it’s also incomplete. I’m learning that two things can coexist within one reality: joy and pain, gratitude and resentment, peace and anxiety. We do ourselves a disservice when we try to force one emotion out to make room for another. Life doesn’t work like that. Motherhood certainly doesn’t.

Sometimes, motherhood feels like both a blessing and a burden. And honestly? That’s okay. Don’t @ me because I admit feeling ungrateful at times. I’m human. Maybe if more of us allowed ourselves to acknowledge the difficult parts—the sadness, the uncertainty, the exhaustion—we’d stop treating gratitude like a mask we’re required to put on. Maybe we’d actually experience gratitude in its fullest, truest form: not as a performance, but as a soft place we return to once we’ve been honest about what hurts.

So this Thanksgiving, I’m choosing to honor the coexistence. The joy and the ache. The gratitude and the grief. The parts of motherhood that fill me, and the parts that emptied me before I even knew how to ask for help.

Because maybe gratitude isn’t about pretending. Maybe it’s about finally allowing ourselves to feel everything.

"We don’t have to pretend to be fine when we are not. We don’t need to push through and be strong. Gratitude is a soft landing place that requires us to be honest, open, and willing to look at everything we’re facing and not turn away."

–Alex Elle

With love <3 and gratitude,

Amber