Gratitude Is A Muscle
When you become a full-time caregiver, communication with your partner can shift in subtle and profound ways. The demands of caregiving can leave little space for the tenderness and patience that once came more easily. You may find that exhaustion or stress lead to curt words or silence where there used to be laughter and connection. This is where the art of skillful communication becomes a lifeline — speaking and listening with awareness, allowing both of you to feel seen and heard. Gratitude can open that doorway. When you take time to notice what your partner is doing rather than what they’re not, and when you express appreciation for even small moments of connection, you invite warmth and understanding back into your relationship.
Gratitude is satisfying. When you steep in gratitude, it pervades everything, including how you are being with yourself. What if you were to let yourself be satisfied, rather than scanning for what’s wrong or unfinished? This takes effort and practice — a training of the mind to focus on goodness and the ways you’re already tending to yourself. Gratitude is a muscle, and like any muscle, it strengthens with use. Notice when you tell yourself, I don’t have time for that, and skip your morning walk, your stretch, your meditation. Be flexible. Let go of what’s not nourishing you, and set boundaries with those things that are draining. Each moment you choose gratitude, you’re retraining your brain toward calm, connection, and presence.
Simple practices can help anchor this mindset: take a few moments before sleep to speak aloud the things you’re grateful for — name them and breathe them in. Or, as a family, write down weekly gratitudes, place them in a jar, and take turns reading them together. In your relationships, especially with your partner and your Rare child, gratitude includes the willingness to receive — to receive what is being offered, to receive yourself. Acknowledge your patience, your capacity to stay with the process of understanding a nonverbal child, your ability to keep showing up with love. In these moments of receiving and appreciation, you reclaim the simple, sustaining joy of belonging to your own heart and you will have more capacity to truly enjoy the life you are living.
Coming Up Next Week: Nervous System Regulation - Staying calm embodied as things change (Stage 1 - Noticing Changes:)
This week our theme will be Noticing Changes. In the early stages of becoming a caregiver for your Rare child, you are asked to embrace many changes as you move from a full or part-time professional to a full-time caregiver. You will have many feelings arise like fear, guilt and possibly shame as you step into being an expert on your child’s Rare disease and it can be overwhelming. In this meeting, we will explore ways of staying calm and grounded as you navigate your ever changing life as a raregiver. Learn simple ways to regulate your nervous system. Join us for a potent and practically supportive session.
Please Join Us for the Women's Empowerment Circle every Tuesday at 10am PST.
You may not realize how much you need the Raregivers community until you find it.
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84782918881
We look forward to being with you soon.
