I was always told by my mother that I should be grateful to be alive, to have a roof over my head, to have food to eat, to be able to go to a good school. The idea was that she was my savior, and I was beholden to her. It invalidated the idea that I had anything to complain about under her care.
This, of course, was a load of bullshit, and many other people have had the same experiences.
Some people who commented on that post said things that I really identified with. As one person said, I was commanded to be grateful for things that parents are supposed to provide as basic needs. And I was never provided other things that parents are also supposed to provide as basic needs, like love and compassion, and I was emotionally abused on a daily basis.
Thus, when someone advises me to “be grateful” or to “keep a gratitude journal,” it makes me angry. It takes me back to being that small child or teenager who was ordered to be overtly grateful for the bare necessities my parents were providing while I was supposed to ignore the abuse and neglect inflicted upon me.
This poisoned the word and the concept for me. It took away all good meaning in the words “grateful” and “gratitude.”
So Thanksgiving is not a wonderful holiday for me. I hate being reminded that I’m “supposed” to be thankful for things. I don’t need any fucking reminders. I know there are things that I’m glad I have. But I’m not “thankful” for those things.
On the other hand, I do say “thank you” frequently, as an acknowledgement of good things people do for me and say to me. I think it’s incredibly important to acknowledge, in the moment, that someone has been helpful to me in whatever way.
I think that my swiftness to thank may stem in part from not wanting someone else to ruin the “thank you” feeling by reminding me that I’m supposed to say “thank you.” I was prompted repeatedly as a child that I should say “thank you,” even when the situation did not call for it.
Of course, kids do need to be taught basic manners, that’s a given. But forcing gratitude and thankfulness on a person is the wrong way to go about it. Instead, it might be better to model and to ask leading questions than to tell a child, “What are you supposed to say?”
I wish my mother hadn’t poisoned this for me, but she did. So stop fucking telling me I should be grateful. I may have been better off than some, but I was a damn sight worse off than many others.