The Practice of Wild Gratitude
The art of holding both beauty and brokenness this holiday season.
Now that my kids are grown, I’ve got a blended family of 8 (ten if you count partners). Our traditions have changed—kids come and go when they can. Sometimes feelings and schedules get complicated as we all navigate the new normal of what we’re trying to build.
We’ve had explosions. We’ve had estrangement. And we’ve had togetherness, a lot of fun times, and some not-so-fun times. Sometimes we’re not sure what we’re going to get when everyone shows up, which can be its own sort of crazy.
Our first Thanksgiving as a blended family was rough.
The situation was new for all of us, and several people chose to deal with that by showing up as their most unpleasant selves—letting me know quite clearly that they did not approve.
I invited a lot of people, everyone in our extended family, as well as close friends and their families. At one point, a friend pulled me aside and asked me how I was holding up.
“There’s a lot of animosity in this house today,” she told me. “I’m not sure how I would be if I were you.”
She wasn’t wrong. There were some hard things in the house that day. And some great things, too.
The truth was, I was feeling a lot inside. Grateful to be with a supportive, loving partner and in a healthy relationship, surrounded by many loved ones. However, there was also a part of me that was angry. A part of me questioned if I’d made the right decisions. I wondered if it would always be this hard.
I like to call what I experienced that day ‘ wild gratitude’—the ungoverned, untamed version of thankfulness that doesn’t require you to bypass pain or choose one feeling over another.
It’s gratitude that makes room for grief. Joy that coexists with fear. Love that also holds disappointment. It’s the practice of refusing to edit your emotional experience to make it more palatable.
Wild gratitude says that all of it gets to be true.
Here’s what I’ve learned about holding both beauty and brokenness, especially during the holidays:
The firsts are very hard—because anything new can feel hard. But then, it gets a little easier.
That first blended family Thanksgiving felt impossible. But we kept showing up. We kept trying. And somewhere along the way, we learned how to hold complexity without forcing resolution. We are (I am) still learning this.
You can’t control how people show up, but you can control yourself.
You can’t control your adult children, or your ex, or your drunk uncle. But you can control how you choose to engage, how you choose to perceive, how you choose to honor your own experience.
Acceptance doesn’t mean approval—it means acknowledging what is.
Things are different. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad or wrong. It just means they’re different. And it’s ok if that feels both liberating and devastating.
Honoring yourself is not optional.
If this holiday is filled with firsts and feels heavy, don’t pile on more tasks. Add white space. Schedule time off. Take a nap after you shop. Go to a movie. Ask yourself: What do I need right now? And then actually listen to the answer.
New can breathe life into things you care about.
Reframing is one of the most effective tools we have. If you’re faced with a shift this holiday season, think about it as breathing new life into something you care about. You get to create traditions that actually fit your life now—not the life you thought you’d have.
This Thanksgiving, we gathered at our NC home with those who could make it from our combined family of 6 kids. I didn’t try to control who showed up or how they showed up. I didn’t try to make it perfect or force togetherness - I did it imperfectly. I found that somehow, in that imperfection, it created space for growth and connection.
I’ve learned that the best gift I can give myself and those around me is permission to be exactly where we are.
Grateful and grieving.
Excited and anxious.
Present and wishing they were somewhere else.
All of it gets to be true.
That’s the practice of wild gratitude—holding multiple truths without forcing yourself to choose. Without making one emotion wrong so another can be right. Without performing peace when you’re actually in pieces.
For the rest of this holiday season, give yourself permission to:
Not be ok
Skip traditions that don’t work for you
Create something new if that’s what you choose
Feel all the feelings—good and bad
You don’t have to tame your experience to make it acceptable. You don’t have to edit your emotions to make them more digestible for others.
You can hold it all. The mess and the magic. The love and the loss. The gratitude and the grief.
That’s not a contradiction, it’s just real.
LYLAS,
Sara
What are you both grateful for AND grieving this season?
What will you allow yourself to do this year that you wouldn’t have last year?