You can be grateful and suffering at the same time

It's been weeks since I wrote you - I am sorry for that. I guess I needed a break. Despite being a mindfulness practitioner and teacher, sometimes I am the last to know what I need.

Recently, a lot of attention has been paid to the presence of inequities and privilege in how we have been affected by the current social, political, and healthcare-related circumstances. As a (healthy) able-bodied, middle class, white woman who is self-employed (in large part because my partner is employed full time by a large organization and because of A LOT of childcare and other support from my parents), I have navigated this period with a relatively high degree of flexibility.

What I would like you to know - whether it has to do with your Intuitive Eating path, your meditation practice, reckoning with your role in creating a more just world, getting through the coronavirus pandemic, or anything else you encounter in your life - is that you can be grateful and suffering at the same time.

What this looks like for me right now:

* I am grateful for my health AND I am often in pain and worry about the impact of this period on my mental health

* I am grateful for our apartment AND I often feel trapped and desperate for trees and water

* I am grateful for my work AND I am stressed to the hilt with the demands of parenting, homeschooling, and not being able to explore all my creative ideas

* I am grateful for the time with my family AND I miss being alone (like ever!)

Now it's your turn. Could you allow yourself to acknowledge the complexity and the simultaneity of seemingly opposing thoughts? Because that is the truth about our experience. We are not one-note organisms.

Four weeks of silence and that's all I got: you can be grateful and suffering at the same time.

You're welcome :)