When gratitude isn't enough to live for
What does it mean to be grateful for experiencing life when you're not sure you're grateful to be alive?
In 2024, I bought a journal called Three Good Things. The point is to write down three things you’re grateful for every day for 13 weeks. It’s meant to help you reflect on memories, gratitude and connection. I tried to do this, but quickly gave up. Two years later, I find myself thinking about gratitude a lot. Am I thankful to be alive? Or am I just thankful for the experiences in my life? Are they the same thing? Maybe not.
At the time I bought the journal, it was a real struggle to find one thing, let alone three things, to be thankful for every day. I wasn’t grateful for my life and I was barely functioning, racked with grief and traumatic memories. Marcus had been gone less than six months, and I didn’t feel gratitude towards a world that no longer had him in it.
I can’t remember whether it was a conscious or subconscious decision, but I started this gratitude practice on May 29, 2024 — what would have been Marcus’s 30th birthday. His first “heavenly birthday”.
My entry from that day goes like this:
1. I got out of bed on a really, really hard day. It could always be worse. At least I’m here. I have healed in some ways in the last six months.
2. I went to the climbing gym with a friend. My body and mind felt tired and I was sad because it’s Marcus’s birthday. But I went anyway and it helped clear my mind. A moment of calm on a hard day.
3. I shared the birthday cake I made for Marcus with a few friends.
Reading that now, I’m a little shocked by how positive it was.
Following that first entry, I wrote every day for 32 days. Not all of them had three things written down, and some of them I clearly had to stretch for, like:
“Made a berry cobbler.”
“Got out of bed today.”
“Went for a walk with Pepper and I saw a whole bunch of bumblebees on the lupins.”
But as I read them over now, maybe they weren’t a stretch. These are not moments I would have remembered had I not written them down, because they are simple.
I’m surprised by how positive a lot of my entries are from the few weeks following May 29. They don’t match my memories of that time, and they certainly don’t match my personal journal, which contains a lot of yelling and sobbing in the form of writing. But both can be true.
Grief was happening, and so was life. I was devastated by Marcus’s absence, and I was also climbing, baking, walking my dog and noticing bumblebees. The grief didn’t disappear during those moments. It was still there, woven into everything else.
Thinking back on this old journal practice reminds me that even when deeply grieving, I could still recognize small, simple moments. I may not have felt good about my life, but there were things still worth noticing.
Despite not having written in this book for two years, I often think about the many things I have to be grateful for since 2024: travelling to Japan, Bulgaria, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, Jackson Hole and Costa Rica. Attending three beautiful weddings. Summiting mountains and hiking long trails. Those are the things that stand out. Why? They’re the big, loud moments. I am lucky to have these things in my life. But being able to identify them does not automatically mean that I feel glad to be alive.
I think there is a difference between being grateful for an experience and being grateful for existing. I am thankful and fortunate for the things I get to experience, the places I’ve been and the memories I’ve made in the past three years. That’s three years of living that Marcus didn’t get. But I am not thankful that I have to get up without him and go through life in a world that he is not in. This existence is not the one I want. While I can fill it with all the experiences in the world, nothing can make up for that.
That’s the difficult thing about grief; it doesn’t happen in isolation. It permeates every other thing, every moment of my life. Even when something “good” happens, there is still that gaping hole of his absence, the space where he should be.
A lot of gratitude practices and grief advice tell you to stop and smell the roses, to appreciate the little things like sunshine, birds singing or the taste of fresh bread. Those things can be lovely. But noticing beauty isn't the same as feeling safe, connected or supported. And while these small pleasures might make a difficult day a little better, they can't fill the void left by losing a loved one. I think that's why I gave up on Three Good Things.
I'm starting to realize that what I'm missing isn't the little things, but the quiet foundations of a life worth living. For me, that looks like physical health, stability, emotional and personal safety, connection and fulfilling relationships. It’s having enough energy and capacity to handle an ordinary challenge; having someone who acknowledges what you've been going through; feeling wanted and included rather than being the one who always reaches out; sleeping and waking without every day feeling like a battle; and knowing that your presence matters to someone.
These aren't the experiences we celebrate as the highlights of our lives. They aren’t the stories we tell about our travels or the photographs we share from a mountain summit.
These are the foundations that were ripped away by the loss of my partner and the life we planned together. So maybe they're the things we should truly cherish.
Many of these foundations are absent from my life right now. Establishing, nurturing and growing them will take time. I don't know whether doing so will make me grateful to be alive. Maybe that doesn't have to be the starting point. Maybe I can begin by building a life that I can at least participate in, even if it isn't the life I wanted. A life in which grief is still present, woven into everything else, but where there is also room for connection, stability, safety and a bit of beauty. Maybe those are the things I should be writing about in my gratitude journal. Not just what I'm grateful for, but the evidence for what I'm trying to build.
I still don't know how to reconcile not being grateful to be alive with being grateful for experiences. I don’t need to figure it out right now. Nothing will bring Marcus back or make this the life I would have chosen. But maybe the quiet foundations can make it a little easier to live. A little less empty.
They are worth working towards because they might make life worth living.