Your Brain on Gratitude

Gratitude changes your brain

feeds your spirit

uplifts your mood.

Studies show that cultivating gratitude has important and lasting benefits.

It increases satisfaction with life, builds resilience, helps you cope and can even improve your sleep

Dr. Rick Hanson suggests the following practices for rewiring your brain toward gratitude:

1. Notice feelings of gratitude that are already present in your brain.

2. Find things to be grateful or in your life and in the lives of others.

3. Really enjoy the experience of gratitude. Savor it for at least 10 sec.

4. Let the feeling of gratitude sink into your body. Smile as you feel it.

5. “Imagine that some of the many things you feel grateful for or about are showering down into and gradually filling any emptiness inside”.*

6. Say “thank you”.

photo credit - Pat Mann

I am grateful for Dr Hanson’s neuropsychological research and his ability to teach about our brains in easy to understand words.

I weave together his brain research with the simple suggestion to find 5 things to be grateful for every day. Just 5 things. Start small.

One day my list included; sunshine, a friend’s call, belly rubs for my dog, not spilling food on my shirt. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I took 10 seconds to savor each grateful thing. I smiled. And, my gratitude list grew longer.

You, too, will find that a funny thing will start to happen. You will begin to notice more and more good things in your life as you develop your own gratitude practices.

*Hanson PhD, Rick. Hardwiring Happiness, p.193-4.

Belonging & Holidays

We all need to feel like we belong.

This sense of not fitting in or having a place in the universe can more easily surface during the holidays.

You might think you don’t belong if you’re grieving and feel out of sync with holiday cheer.

Maybe your parenting plan doesn’t allow your kids to celebrate with you.

Perhaps your family has rejected your partner and won’t allow you to bring her to dinner.

Or, you’re single and tired of tagging along to your friends’ festive traditions.

And what do you do about religious services when you no longer believe what you were taught as a child?

These are just a few examples of stories I’ve heard in my office over the years as people struggle to come to terms with belonging and the holidays.

Your situation might be different but still create that sense of isolation and loneliness that comes with thinking that you don’t belong.

If you saw Sandra Bullock in the movie, “Gravity”, you’ll know what I mean when I describe it as feeling like you’re tumbling, untethered through space because you’re cut off from the mother-ship.

One thing you can do at times like this is go outside and be in nature.

Take a breath of fresh air.

Walk a little.

Listen.

Touch something.

Watch.

Take another breath.

Mary Oliver says it beautifully in her poem, “Wild Geese”

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”

Dementia

The single most important piece of advice I received about loving someone with dementia is to remember that they are more than their illness.

Although it hurts to witness their mental and physical capacities slowly deteriorate, the Essence of who they are remains.

Call it their spirit. Call it their bigness. Call it their soul.

It doesn’t really matter what you call it. What matters is that you remember.

Grief: Losing Your Foundation

This photo is of an old house I recently walked by.

It was sitting in the middle of a cow pasture and had been moved from it's original foundation.

I thought about how grief feels just like this when you lose someone you love.

It's devastating.

It's as if all your windows are blown out and you've lost your foundation.

You're not sure what anything means or who you are anymore.

You're not even sure where you belong.

All you know is that you are on some kind of trailer, called grief, and it is carrying you into the unknown.

I was exploring this metaphor with someone recently and she provided a valuable insight: "Yeah, I may be in a new cow pasture, but I've got a few bricks still underneath me to hold me up". She went on to name her remaining bricks.

How about you?

What holds you up when you feel like collapsing? What holds you up when you don't know where grief will take you?

What are your bricks?

It's okay if your grief is so raw that you can't think of any. I get what it's like to be in that place, too.

Just know that there will come a day when you will wake up one morning and get out of bed like you usually do.

You'll stub you toe on a brick that you hadn't even noticed.

You'll know its name.

Day of the Dead: A Time to Connect

Shortly after Mom died, I wrote a poem that included these lines:

"I am not ready

to call you my Ancestor,

nor celebrate you

on the Day of the Dead.

Closer than that,

I want you near me.

Closer than that,

my Mom - my friend. "

I simply wasn't ready to pray traditional Catholic prayers for her on All Souls' Day (Nov 1st) , nor put her photo on a Dia De Los Muertos altar.

Dia De Los Muertos, is a traditional Mexican celebration that honors the dead. Families make altars upon which they place special foods, candles and photographs of their loved ones. Some believe that the spirit of the dead visit their families on October 31 and leave on November 2nd.

The poem goes on:

"I know you are bigger

then how I knew you.

I know you are more

then this lifetime we shared..."

I knew she was no longer here in her body, but I didn't know where she was nor how to relate to her.

Gradually, I began to create a new relationship with her. I told stories and talked about her. Even more importantly, I talked to her. And, as I did, I had a growing sense of her presence in my daily life.

Half a year after Mom's death, I made an Ancestor altar on a bookshelf in my living room. Her photo is on it, along with pictures of other dead family members, friends and role models. Most mornings I light a white candle to greet and thank them. Sometimes I ask for help.

Today I actually look forward to honoring her on the Day of the Dead with play, humor and sugar skulls.

One of the tasks of mourning is to find a lasting connection with your person who has passed. (JW Worden). It's not about letting go, nor cutting off the bond. It's about figuring out what works for you and your loved one to keep the connection alive. And, like any relationship, it's an evolving process.

I encourage you to start now, if you haven't already. It's as simple as saying hello, watching for a visit in your dreams or asking for a sign of their presence in your life.

Even if you didn't grow up with a family celebration on the Day of the Dead or pray somber prayers on All Souls' Day, you can still find ways to celebrate them this time of year.

It's an opportunity for you to remember, feel, laugh, cry.

You can cook their favorite foods. Light candles. Get a fresh bouquet of flowers. Tell a story about them to your friends, children, grandchildren.

It will help you. It will help them.