November is the month where gratitude gets loud. Every ad, post, and conversation seems to circle back to giving thanks. Be thankful. Count your blessings. Focus on what you have. And that sounds nice in theory. But if you’re navigating grief, exhaustion, or disappointment, all that gratitude talk can feel like a command: smile, even if it hurts.

But here’s the truth: gratitude doesn’t erase the ache. It doesn’t take away the heaviness that comes with a death loss. It doesn’t soften the sting of missing your person at the table this year.

You can be grateful and sad. You can notice small joys and wish with your whole heart that things were different. You can love who’s around you and long for the one who isn’t. Both are true. Both belong.

The problem isn’t gratitude itself. The problem arises when gratitude is used like a band-aid to cover up pain or as a weapon to shame us out of our feelings. That’s gaslighting—telling ourselves or being told by others that because we “still have so much to be thankful for,” the grief shouldn’t hurt so much.

But grief doesn’t disappear when you count your blessings. Exhaustion doesn’t fade because you wrote three things in a gratitude journal. Gratitude can’t override missing your person. And it doesn’t have to.

What gratitude can do is come alongside you. It can sit with you in the tension. It can remind you that even in the mess of emotions—grief, love, disappointment, relief, even anger—there can also be flickers of light. A friend who shows up. A memory that makes you smile through tears. A moment of laughter you didn’t expect.

This season, let gratitude be a companion, not a command. Let it walk with you, not silence you. You don’t have to choose between thankfulness and grief, between appreciation and missing. You get to carry them together.

So if November feels heavy, you’re not doing gratitude wrong. You’re simply human, holding both joy and pain in the same hands. And that’s okay.

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