The Most Important Thing To Know About Gratitude

Or, perhaps more accurately, the most important thing I’ve learned about gratitude after years of being annoyed by those Instagram posts urging me to “Be grateful!” when everything felt like it was collapsing, and then I had to feel terrible about not being able to feel grateful for my objectively lovely life.

Here’s the Secret:

You can’t spackle gratitude over pain that needs to be acknowledged. You can’t paste appreciation over feelings that need to be felt.

I mean, you CAN. You can do anything. I believe in you.

But here’s a piece that’s often missing when people talk about gratitude and appreciation practices. Which are wonderful and life-changing - appreciation is an energy that can shift your perspective and experience in a hot second - but you can’t skip over the feelings to get there.

If the very thought of a gratitude practice annoys the ever-loving snit out of you? (Been there. Fist bump, friend.) It’s time to dredge up the feelings. Check in with yourself to see what needs to be felt, acknowledged, loved, listened to, met as a friend. When we do that, when we let ourselves rant, yell, vent, complain, or otherwise yank up whatever goop we’ve been trying to stuff into our spleen, that’s when gratitude and appreciation begins to rise up naturally.

We won’t have to grasp for it or force it. It will just float to the top. Because all the heavier feelings sitting on top of the true appreciation have lifted.

My experience with gratitude - even for my objectively very lovely life - has shown me over and over that if I try to jump to gratitude without honoring my upset or frustration just doesn’t work.

As a champion feelings suppresser born of world-class repressers, I had to learn how to do this. (My whole family has done a lot of work here, except for my Dad who died first. One could argue he died to get out of it. Feel your feels! It will keep you alive!) I had to learn how to feel first. Say my piece. Vent a bit. Get out whatever’s festering.

If I could say one thing to the world, it would be this:

If you’re feeling blocked - creatively, financially, or anywhere else - there may be some feelings to acknowledge. Listen to them. Feel them as sensation in your body without writing a whole Broadway musical about them. (I mean, DO write a whole Broadway musical about them. But if you’re trying to write that musical and can’t, it’s probably because your feelings will be divas until you say “hi” and “how can I help” and “you’re pretty.”)

Once you feel the things, you won’t have to force the appreciation, creativity, or love. It will be a part of you. You won’t have to feel bad about not being able to muster up gratitude for your objectively lovely life. You can just bask. Until the feelings return.

My Soul is Expensive

My soul genuinely thinks I have a trust fund.

Maybe it's because our larger selves don't register money the way we humans must. My understanding is that we all have this big umbrella and the human you that's reading this right now is only one aspect standing under the big umbrella of you. All your past selves, past lives, and whatever else you're doing while your human is charging around on earth - all of them are under this larger umbrella. And that umbrella is deeply connected to the universal field of intelligence, is an intrinsic part of it, which is where my umbrella metaphor falls apart.

Whatever the reason, my soul is always yelling YES! to things my human bank account can't yet afford. It's like having to say no to a toddler every single day. If that toddler had a wonky hip and really wanted to go to the chiropractor, but also has shoulders that currently have more chemistry in common with concrete than human flesh and wants to go to the masseuse, but also has teeth that the dentist keeps saying need very expensive things and hahahaha, no, they aren't covered by your insurance! Let's not even revisit the sleep thing and what my brain may or may not need right now. (I still don't trust Kaiser. They keep trying to diagnose my brain based solely on what my brain says about itself.)

But what my soul really wants, aside from the basics to keep my body functioning, is expensive trips. The Giraffe Manor in Kenya. Hot springs in Iceland, preferably with the Northern Lights overhead. Penguins anywhere I can find penguins. Any place that's had a restaurant on Chef's Table and can I please eat there.

My soul also wants classes and seminars - not the cheap ones, no. It wants the expensive ones. I could easily spend a year's tuition (granted, a year's worth of Barnard tuition from the late '90s, no idea what preposterous amount it is now) on all the things I want to learn this year.

Since my soul moves faster than my bank account, I try to figure out how to do things on my own. I can't get to Kenya on my own, but I can stalk the giraffes on their instagram account! I can't pay for all the education I want, but I can do my best to figure things out on my own using the library! But it starts to feel isolating. Because I'm doing everything by myself with the help of the internet or books. I could create a community around it, but I want to do too many disparate things for that to make sense, and also communities require an incredible amount of time and energy. Isolation is faster. But that's frustrating, which is a sign of misalignment for me.

So, honestly, what I'm focusing on right now is money. Creating it in a way that doesn't require me to be a cog in the capitalistic machine - which I couldn't do at this point, even if I wanted to. Receiving it in a way that's good for me and everyone around me. Remembering that hard work doesn't create money - just look at the distribution of wealth in this world. The teachers and nurses and firefighters and gardeners and food service workers don't have it.

The more my life, soul, nervous system, and what I see happening in the world feel deeply affected by money, the more I want to dig into the Way Things Work and change it. I'm starting to get really intense about this. Especially about my belief that the big money should be in the hands of women. Women do good things with it. Women distribute it. Women take care of people with it. (A lot of men do too, but historically the disparity has been wide. Also, when I think about wealthy females, I think of Dolly Parton. When I think about wealthy males, I think Musk and Bezos and...you probably get my point.)

I'm still tuning in about what to do with this. How to help, in a way that creates money. How to fill my own cup first, so I don't screw myself and my health over again by doing too much for too little. How to help everyone have the money and resources they need to take care of themselves, their families, and the world - in whatever way is correct for them.

Stay tuned, I guess. Whatever I do over here in my little corner, the money ride is getting wild.

Love, Amber

P.S. To the people in Cash Compass, thank you. To the people who support me on Patreon, thank you. To my future agent, who will help me figure out what to do with all these books, thank you. To the people who pay me to write things, thank you. You are all the reason I can pay my bills, and that is something my delicate-peony nervous system needs. Next up, giraffes.

Book Writing Warm-up

You’re supposed to warm-up before you do anything strenuous, to avoid pulling something important. Something critical to your ability to wash the dishes or your hair or falling asleep without pharmaceuticals. Writing counts as strenuous. My brain needs all the stretching it can get these days.

For the past thirteen years, I’ve been working on a book. The Dead Dad Book. Is its working title and also a giant spoiler alert. In case you skimmed past that part where I’ve been working on this for thirteen years, I’ll repeat myself: THIRTEEN YEARS. THIRTEEN YEARS I’VE BEEN WORKING ON THIS BOOK. On and off, sure. Some years, I gave it barely a passing thought, but still. That’s a lot of years. A lot of years to not be finishing a big project. It’s time to wrap up and move on to the rest of my life.

2025 feels like a completion year. I’ve been feeling that strongly and the astrologers and intuitive I see on Instagram seem to agree, which is always nice. I enjoy being right. Completion of creative projects, completion of old patterns and healing cycles. Completion of The Artist’s Way, something I’ve tried numerous times and never actually finished. A friend swears that it’s changed her life every time she’s finished. I just want to get more than halfway through it. A positive life change would be a refreshing bonus.

So I need to finish this book. (And all my other books, but that’s a problem for another day.) As you can see from the existence of this blog post, I’m procrastinating. I call it warming up but we all know what’s really going on here. Procrastination, stickiness from the depths of my consciousness, resistance to everything the writing - and finishing - this book means.

I’m beginning to understand why writing it has taken so long. This book has been more a process of healing generational wounds - raise your hand if you have alcoholism in your family! - than of just writing some stories and calling it a day. It’s been a transformation of my own ability to relate to my emotions, rather than numbing them. It’s been a part of the healing process after my father’s death.

Here are all the reasons I’m resisting finishing this book, in no particular order:

• I don’t know how to write a memoir / book of essays / how to book on healing generational trauma and a family lineage of alcoholism.

• I honestly don’t know what this book even is.

• Not sure I’ve actually healed any of those things.

• The thought of sending it to agents and getting rejected as many times as my other books have feels like a sad trombone in my soul.

• My brother doesn’t want to be in it - at least he didn’t last time I checked which may have been seven years ago now, but I can’t imagine much has changed - and it’s hard not to include him. You can’t just vanish a main character. So I’ll need two versions, the public version and the family version.

• That’s too many versions.

• I never remember things accurately and I both want my family to look over it and don’t want anyone to see it until it’s published lest the “that’s not how it happened”s come rolling in.

• Do you know how many drafts of this I have? Scattered over laptops and the cloud and notes, both paper and digital? Neither do I, because I lost track years ago. The first draft of this book has been lost to time and space.

• I gotta quit with this list, I think it might be making everything worse. Turning my book warm-up into an anxious brain dump. Not that I have anything against a frantic brain dump, but maybe you shouldn’t publish them anywhere. (Totally going to.)

Maybe I need to actually stretch. With my body, not my fingers clacking frantically on a keyboard. Get the blood moving and the heart pumping and bring some motion from the physical space into the etheric space from which I need to pluck this book.

Because my trust in my ability to finish this book, to make it something entertaining and helpful, something I’m really proud of, has eroded in recent years, I’ve been tuning in for myself about how to best finish it. Here’s what I got yesterday: “Just write your memories. Just write it for you.” Here’s what I got today: “Imagine this book in every bookstore you ever walk into for the rest of your life - what would you want it to say?”

Either way, it feels like a lot of pressure. So here are some mantras: Done is better than perfect. Things can be fun and impactful without overthinking then to death, or over the course of decades. You can do this, but…you have to actually do it.

Sleep-Deprived Woman, Reporting for Duty

One of the reasons I didn’t have children is because I knew I couldn’t handle the sleep deprivation. Joke’s on me, because I’m not sleeping any way.

Did you know that the sleep studies saying humans need eight hours of sleep were done on men? Women actually need ten hours of sleep. A NIGHT. Do you know how often I get ten hours of sleep in one single night? About once a year. Most nights I’m thrilled to crack seven. Four nights in the past week, I’ve been struggling along, haggard and bumping into things, with three or four hours.

Humans don’t operate well like this. It’s 3:28 a.m. and I’ve been awake for four hours already. That’s right, I went to bed around 8:30, woke up around 11:30 after a bad dream and haven’t slept since. I’m now on the couch anger blogging in hopes of convincing my brain to shut up and my body to rest.

Hopefully this peanut butter toast and expensive but thus far useless sleep drink will help.

You know what I really want? An app that takes your favorite comedy specials and mutes the applause, especially the applause at the end. Ooh, I hate that applause at the end. I’ve finally fallen asleep in the last ten minutes after hours of insomnia before turning on Son of Patricia for the 97th time and let Trevor Noah’s dulcet tones lure my cranky, neuro-deficient brain back to sleep. AND THEN THE GODDAMN UPROARIOUS APPLAUSE WAKES ME UP AGAIN. I mean, I’m sure that kind of applause is life blood for comedians, it sure would be for me, but can we at least develop an app that slowly lowers the volume on comedy shows so that once you’ve finally fallen asleep, you stay asleep? And by “you” I mean “me.” I just need some sleep, man.

It’s really my brain. I suspect my body would fall back asleep if my anxious brain didn’t take this quiet time opportunity to torture me. I’ve become a mental master during the daylight hours. Heading down the anxious rabbit hole? I switch courses within a minute or two. Intrusive thought? I flick it away. Old pattern reappearing in hopes of catching me in a weak moment? NOT IN THE SWEET SUNLIGHT OF MIDMORNING, SATAN. But at night, when all I want to do is sleep, and I’m afraid the tools I use during the day when my anxiety brain starts hopping will just wake me up, I really need some help.

Like pills, honestly. I’ve never been a pill person. The way I was raised, taking a Tylenol in college was an act of rebellion, forget all the fun drugs. When I was in my early twenties, I went to see someone about depression and his only solution was anti-depressants and I heard a really clear voice within say “this is not for you” and so I walked away. He basically chased me down the hall with his prescription pad. I’ve never regretted that decision. But it does not escape me that literally every time I go to the doctor, they try to give me pills with no mention of getting to the root of the issue, but the one time I go to the doctor because I actually want some sleeping pills for when the insomnia gets really bad, he tries to get me to go to a sleep study first, a sleep study which is impossible to schedule.

So I’m still here, rage blogging on my couch at 3:33 am because I had a bad dream, woke up after three hours of sleep, and that might just be it for me tonight.

My reason for writing here is to write myself to a new perspective, but I have no new perspective here. I just know how I feel the days after getting ten hours of sleep - like a superhero - and how I feel the days (far more common) when I get three or four hours of sleep - like an addled slug.

So if you see me trying to do things tomorrow, an addled slug, know that it's a triumph of the will.

The Profound Beauty of the Void

Being in the void is one of the scariest things we can experience. We can’t see the way out. We have no idea how or when the situation will resolve, we have no idea if what we want will ever unfold for us. 

But the void is where the rebirth happens, where the transformation begins. 

We can be in the void with a creative project, a business, a relationship. Your entire life may feel like it’s in the void. Maybe you’ve been navigating that rebirth, that scary void, for years. 

I feel you. I’ve been there - for years. Being in the void for a protracted period is one of the hardest things we can go through - when what once worked doesn’t work any more. When what we once relied on fades away. When pieces of ourselves feel lost, or we’ve changed so utterly that we barely recognize ourselves any more. 

We’re required to move through the void to create. 

To create those beautiful things only you can bring into the world, to create a life that surprises and delights you in the best of ways. 

The void feels like nothing, the scariest of nothings. But we create from nothing. 

But first we have to rest in the void. Rather than try to move through it, fight through it, or even heal through it. 

We have to surrender - oh, that word - to the darkness rather than try to light our way out. 

We have to trust that what’s growing within us will bloom in the perfect time - maybe not our prescribed time, but the perfect time for what you’re creating - whether it’s a book, a business, a relationship, a family, or a new phase of life and evolution. 

As someone who navigated the void for years - sometimes resting, sometimes trusting, sometimes trying to fight my way out, I know how scary it is to be in the void, especially when it feels never-ending, when you can measure your void time by calendar years. 

So I want to have a conversation about it. About the challenges and the profound beauty of the void. About how to care for yourself and your life from within the void. How to navigate it so that the profound transformation of the void can find you, can sweep you out when it’s time. Not when you’re ready, but when it’s time. 

Love, Amber