If you’ve been following me for a minute, or read my blogs you know that the common theme for me has been gratefulness. I truly believe that living in gratitude is the best medicine. However recently I was challenged to look at things from another perspective. Has our intention to always be grateful caused us to ignore our feelings/ signs of depression. Has this, like a lot of things, caused us to be closed off from healing due to fear of being labeled ungrateful. This idea has me in deep thought. I never thought about how being fixated on being grateful, humble, resilient could be the very thing causing me to in fact internalize my needs, my sense of importance, or my cries for help. It once again acknowledges the importance of balance, or the truth that balance is only an idea but not actually attainable. It’s like multi-tasking. In the career world the one thing they insist you be a pro at is multi-tasking. Well in my past blog, Remnants of 34, I already told you’ll that 34 for was my last year of trying to master this. Because actually there is no such thing. I think the word prioritizing is a better fit. Because in order to complete or get ahead in anything you have to focus on one thing at a time, and something’s are unfortunately more of a priority than others. So my next question is, are we doing ourselves an injustice by prioritizing our feelings on the bottom of our list? Is it okay to be in our feelings? Are we really ungrateful or are we merely having a human moment and need help? Are we arrogant, attention seeking, not humble, or are we just suffering from the lack of confidence in ourselves and need reassurance from those we love? Why is it that the people we love think what we need is everything but acknowledgement of our true feelings to make us strong. When really never being told we are great makes us crave it more and often from the wrong people, or worse we constantly chase this idea of happiness or gratefulness instead of identifying why we aren’t happy and grateful and dealing with that first. It’s like when tough love goes wrong. We seem to have been conditioned to believe that feeling anything other than the positive is a negative personality trait. So now we are creating who we are to make others comfortable, rather than just being our authentic selves. I hope TODAY, not January 1st you can choose to be you and not ashamed of the darker side of you. Most times your story can transform many if only they knew the true story. Gratefulness doesn’t/ shouldn’t mean free from fear, anxiety, sadness, or lack of confidence. Gratefulness is ever evolving and is different for everyone. One thing I hope you are grateful for is the ability to here in every moment and the opportunity to make your day a little more #WeekendISH like. If you are struggling with this, please contact someone you trust or a professional so they can help you heal.