Link from ironymaiden about gratitude

I know that for some folks, Gratitude Lists Don't Work, partially because if you are even a little given to shame, then any difficulty you have in being grateful is going to set you up for a shame spiral. Shame is a normal enough emotion, but it was shitty for me. So I got rid of it *because I can do that*. Not everybody is lucky enough to have a superpower where they can follow their feelings along neural pathways and deliberately starve those pathways of reinforcement.

My gratitude posts are my attempts to balance out the negativity in my life by acknowledging the beauty and sensuous joys that are available to me even though I am in pain. I don't judge you, or advocate for you to make gratitude lists of your own. If that is not how you find joy and connection, then it is not. And I am okay with you living your life in any way you like. I highly advocate taking any of my actions with a grain of salt. Your cost-benefit assessment is unlikely to be anything like mine.

And I'm cool with that, too.