On the Edge of 40: Gratitude, in All Its Forms

As we head into Thanksgiving, I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude. ’Tis the season of “What are you thankful for?”; a question that sounds gentle enough until someone asks it during a year when simply brushing your hair feels like an achievement. Or worse, during a year when that question feels insulting, naive, and jaded, especially during the holiday season when emotions are high, and loss is even more pronounced. For perspective on the holidays and grief, check out this post I wrote back in 2021.

Gratitude as a Luxury

For years, gratitude was one of those concepts people told me I should cling to; a healing tool, a reframing exercise, a daily list I was supposed to write in a pretty journal. Meanwhile, I was over here in early widowhood just trying to breathe. Trying to survive. Trying to remember what day it was. Gratitude felt like a luxury for people whose lives weren’t actively on fire.

I wasn’t ungrateful. I didn’t have the emotional capacity to hold gratitude and grief in the same hand. Not yet.

But grief is a strange sculptor. Over time, it carves out space you never asked for, and eventually, it fills some of that space with feelings that once felt so out of reach. Hope. Joy. Grounding. The ability to exhale. 

Gratitude Feels Different Now

And now, approaching 40 and in this chapter of my story, gratitude feels completely different. It feels deeper. More grounded. More honest. Above all, it feels earned.

I’ve lived through seasons where gratitude was too painful to touch.
I’ve lived through seasons where gratitude made me angry, because it reminded me of everything I’d lost.
I’ve lived through seasons where gratitude was small and fragile, the kind you whisper out of fear of losing it all.

And now, gratitude, a term that once triggered me, seems to come in the everyday moments I don’t take for granted.

What Am I Grateful for this Year?

I’m grateful for my son, who made me a mom, who anchored me to this world when I felt untethered, who continues to grow into one smart, confident little man.

I’m grateful for Paul, the man who stepped into a life already full of love and history and didn’t try to rewrite any of it. A man who honors what came before him, holds space for all of it, all while helping me build something beautiful and uniquely us in the present.

I’m grateful for our baby girl, now eight months old, who arrived as this unexpected, miraculous chapter I never thought I’d get to write. She’s joy and chaos and heart-expanding wonder wrapped in one very determined tiny human.

I’m grateful for Matt. For the love we built. For the lessons I carry. For the ways he shaped me into the woman I am now, the woman capable of rebuilding, growing, loving again, and holding multiple truths at once. For the hilarious stories he left us all with, reminding me that he will forever live on for so many of us.

I’m grateful for my family and friends; the ones who showed up before I even knew what I needed, who stand by me through every chapter, and who continue to cheer for the life I’m building now.

And I’m grateful for the small, ordinary things that were once too “everyday” to notice. Things like:

• Lacing up my shoes and walking alongside my family for our 6th Turkey Trot with the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation
• Coffee that stays warm long enough to drink half of it
• A glass of wine on Feel Good Friday
• My dads’s jokes and mom’s care packages (even at 39)
• Group texts and meme chats that make me laugh when I want to cry
• Sunrises in Maine
• The quiet satisfaction of feeling… settled
• The luxury of anticipating joy again

The older I get, the more I realize gratitude isn’t always about the big, sweeping moments. It’s often in the tiny ones; the ones that slip past you unless you’re paying attention. Gratitude has become less of a practice and more of a way of noticing the life unfolding right in front of me.

And so this year, I’m grateful for the whole mosaic:

• the people who shaped me
• the men who have loved me,
• the grief that refined me,
• the joy that surprised me,
• the littles who keep me laughing,
• and the future I get to keep walking toward.

And I’m deeply, quietly, overwhelmingly grateful for it.