Gratitude That Lights The Dark
Reflections from the dock of the bay
Hello! I’m Kate, a psychotherapist sharing weekly Letters from Therapy. If you enjoy my writing, make sure you’re subscribed. Improve your life and relationships and join me to nurture your soul, accept yourself and find deeper meaning, by upgrading to a paid subscription. You’ll get enriching discovery tools, worksheets and journaling, the podcast, the Heal Your Past Course and more. You’re invited!
When Otis Redding lost everything, had nowhere to turn, and nothing to live for, he later wrote about it as he sat on the famous dock of the bay.
I left my home in Georgia
Headed for the Frisco Bay
'Cause I've had nothing to live for
And look like nothing's gonna come my way
So, I'm just gon' sit on the dock of the bay
Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time(full lyrics and link to song below)
What is There to Be Grateful For?
The power of practicing gratitude is splashed across the internet like tiny flowers growing from cracks in the tarmac as you wait for the bus on a rainy Monday morning.
But how can you feel grateful when you’ve just been dumped? Or your family don’t appreciate you. Maybe you’re in pain, and no-one seems to care. Your daughter says there are paedos in the Library, and is that mould growing up there? Why am I so tired all the time? Why will no one buy my stuff? And anyway, the world is in chaos and we are all going to die, so what’s the point?
Maybe for you, gratitude can just f*ck right off, and take Otis’ insufferable ear-worm and this post with it. I have no argument with this if it’s working for you.
Looks like nothing's gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can't do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I'll remain the same … Otis Redding
Changing The Story
Taking care of our mental health needs work because not only did all those shitty things happen to us, our modern, global, news-informed life is totally unnatural. It is not what we evolved for: the whole world is too big for our small brains. The internet imposes impossible expectations on us. Many of us lost the care of ‘the village’ generations ago, and we may never have had our emotional needs met.
After Pandora did the biggest oops in mythological history, she watched in terror as all evil spiralled from the box she had opened and out into the skies and across the world.
Her regret may well have lit with gratitude when hope glinted out from the bottom of the box.
Our minds are unruly, though adaptive. We have agency over how we see and respond to life’s happenings. Yes, there is loads do, and conversations to have, and no, life isn’t fair. All those things happened and are happening, but you can face it all better when you’re enveloped in the shimmering swirls of your own gratitude.
We can recalibrate our minds negativity bias (maybe you heard that our mind sees things six times worse than they are). This evolved to keep us safe, though most of us are safer than our inner lizard-brain self knows. Gratitude is one way to let it know.
It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
Cultivating Gratitude with Difficult Emotions
If your mood is low, acknowledge your feelings. Get support from an understanding friend or a professional. Review your thoughts and behaviour, in case you can make a change. Be kind to yourself. Experiment with finding things to be grateful for, in amongst the pain, like those flowers in the cracks.
Cultivating gratitude can bring up regret, for the wasted energy focussed on trivial things, bearing grudges, material possessions, a sense of entitlement. Or there’s unaddressed addiction, the sloth of wallowing, the cruelty of comparison or your disregard of your own beautiful self.
When practicing gratitude, notice any unhelpful scripts, patterns, stories and thoughts that come up. Greet them with curiosity and loving kindness, like you would a moody child with a sore finger. Write them out ready to explore.
Perhaps the safety of gratitude makes a space for hidden rage, sadness, difficult memories, or grief that need your attention. Once we are aware, we can heal, move through it, and let it go.
The things we are grateful for are our soft landing when we fall.
When you go into a garden, do you spend more time looking at thorns or flowers?
Finding the Light
Carl Rogers, who founded person centred counselling and psychotherapy working with post-war traumatised veterans in the 1950’s, taught us how a forgotten, solitary potato left in a dark shed will grow a shoot towards a tiny crack of light.
Gratitude Builds Resilience
If praying to Saint Jude, the Patron Saint of Lost Causes isn’t working, gratitude will strengthen your tired soul with its bright light.
Gratitude is oil that prevents the corrosion of dark, sabotaging thoughts.
It kisses our self pity goodbye.
Gratitude replaces shame with love.
Gratitude lights our pathway through the darkness.
Gratitude shifts lack into abundance.
If you tend to catastrophize everything, gratitude gives you balance.
Gratitude is generosity.
Gratitude is free.
When we embrace what we have, rather than focusing on what we don’t, we build resilience to cope with hard things. Gratitude helps us do hard things.
We can sing songs, instead of just rolling off the dock of the bay, and plopping into the sea.
“We cannot direct the winds, but we can adjust the sails.” Irish Proverb
Gratitude Beckons Winds of Change
Change can feel scary. It can threaten those who wish us to stay the same, including ourselves.
The caterpillar’s unforeseen crisis while her body reorganises into a chrysalis is forced to embrace the terrifying unknown. She has to let go.
To let it be.
You know the end of that story. 🦋
Gilding My Life with Daily Gratitude
When my newborn baby with dodgy genes lay dying peacefully in my arms, twenty years ago, I gave her the middle name ‘Joy.’ I was so grateful and joyful to be able to hold her, if only for a moment, and for her to show me how lucky I am to exist at all.
My daily gratitude practice gilds the difficult parts of my life. I say six things I am grateful for out loud as I sip my morning coffee every day. It is six, to counter the pesky negativity bias. This works for me, though if you’re more organised than I am, and want to drill it in, write it in a little book. Then you will have a beautiful collection of wonderful things, to light your way when darkness falls.
Otis Redding died in a tragic accident a few days after recording Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay. He didn’t know it would be a unshakeable hit, and intended to re-record it as it wasn’t even finished. He never knew about the millions of tapping feet he’d set off, or the fifty years of novice whistlers he’d free. He didn’t know how much he inspired us to appreciate how beautiful everything is, even when all is lost.
What are you grateful for today?
Scroll down for journaling questions.
Further Gratitude Reading
Substack glimmers with the gratitude of these writers who know its transformative power. No matter what kind of shit-show you’re in right now, you can find the wonder in it all, like these beautiful souls able to turn dark into light:
- writes the ever inspiring Gratitude Journal
- wrote A Contagion of Blessings with hundreds of others joining in with their blessings last week
- shared this post on re-framing challenge to joy, a part of her gratitude practice
- shares ideas from his gratitude practice and how we can share stories of gratitude
- writes about gratitude in her life as a mother in Appreciation Station here
- wrote Inexplicable Gratitude for Words
- wrote about her experience of how gratitude shifted her perspective in her post Things to be thankful for
- wrote A Slightly Different Take on Gratitude
- wrote I Lost My Job and The World Kept Spinning
- found 100 things to be grateful for in hard times in her post Why I am Grateful
- writes about how manifestation and gratitude intersect in Does manifesting make me ungrateful?
- ’s reflections on Being Grateful for the Food We Eat
- wrote this post about seeking out small glimmers in life here: Glimmer vs Trigger
- wrote Gratitude all year, about embracing gratitude for better wellbeing
- asks are you gratefully unchallenged?
- acknowledges gratitude for what others do in her post I could never do what she does (plus has the cutest foster dog).
- practices gratitude daily, in between teaching yoga
- ends all his posts writing about gratitude
Thank you so much everyone for these contributions. If you have written about gratitude too, or know a great post about it, feel free to post a link in the comments.
Therapeutic Journaling - see below:
Let us know 6 things you’re grateful for in the comments on Substack.
Don’t forget to press the like and please share/restack if you think others would enjoy this post or you would like to help my letters reach further.
I am so grateful for you. Thank you for being here!
Much love
Kate
P.S. See how far you’ve come.
Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay, Otis Redding
Lyrics:
Sittin' in the morning sun
I'll be sittin' when the evening comes
Watching the ships roll in
Then I watch them roll away again, yeah
I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time
I left my home in Georgia
Headed for the Frisco Bay
'Cause I've had nothing to live for
And look like nothing's gonna come my way
So, I'm just gon' sit on the dock of the bay
Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time
Looks like nothing's gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can't do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I'll remain the same, listen
Sittin' here resting my bones
And this loneliness won't leave me alone, listen
Two thousand miles I roam
Just to make this dock my home, now
I'm just gon' sit at the dock of a bay
Watchin' the tide roll away, ooh
Sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' timeOtis Reading
Therapeutic Journaling
What six things are you grateful for today?
Where do you want get to? This month, this year, in five years?
What steps, small and large can you take to get there?
Who and what can support you?
What do you truly need for your life going forwards?
What can you let go of?
Can you ask for help? Demand it?
What untrue stories fight for attention when you feel the kiss of gratitude?
I am also grateful to
at for her challenge to write 24 essays in 2024. Pop over if you’d like to join in!
My six things I’m grateful for are:
My substack community
No pain
A fridge full of food
My sleepy dog
Spring
My tulips still going strong after 6 days
What six things are you grateful for today?