As Americans prepare to set the table for Thanksgiving and I await the call from a client who might just have a Thanksgiving baby this week, my thoughts turn to the importance of gratitude in life, and particularly in birth. Our culture asks us to take a moment of gratitude this week, and many of us will respond by closing our eyes and thinking of the good and pleasant things that life has offered. Certainly, it is good to offer thanks for these things. It might even feel good to do so. But what about those things that don’t feel good or make us happy? What about the relative facing a life-threatening illness? Or the person who has mistreated me and made me lose my job or something else very important to me? Or these *!#%@* labor contractions that HURT. SO. BAD!? Maybe this wasn’t a pregnancy you even wanted and you are terrified about what this is going to mean for your life. How can we talk about gratitude at such a time?

There are a few different things that need to be said here, and it may take some effort to figure out how to hold onto these thoughts at the same time. They may seem to be contradictory, but bear with me. The ability to hold onto contradictory things – life and suffering, pain and joy, letting go and working hard – just might be the essence of what it takes to birth a baby into the world.

First of all, I want to state very clearly that this is not about judging or changing how you might feel about a hard situation. Anger, fear, anguish, and just overwhelmed sobbing are all very valid ways to feel in labor and the postpartum period, and in many other situations in life. So first of all, I want to acknowledge those hard feelings and ask you to acknowledge and allow them in yourself if that is what you are feeling. Life is hard enough and the least we can do is cut ourselves some slack to feel what we feel. There is grace in leaning into what we are feeling, even the less attractive feelings, allowing our feelings to be what they are without self-judgment.

And yet. Maybe those feelings don’t tell the whole story. Maybe there is something else happening in our situation that we would do well to attune to. This brings me to the next point, which may seem to contradict my first point: let us see what happens if we embrace both the difficult feelings and the circumstances that led to those feelings with gratitude. This might seem like looking for the “silver lining” in a situation – for example, we could talk about how labor pains are bringing you closer to seeing your baby and also provide you with valuable information about how you should move to help your baby move where it needs to go. In some cases, looking for the “bright side” or “silver lining” in a situation can be helpful, but in my experience this kind of thinking more often than not becomes counter-productive. It can feel irritating and trivializing to the person experiencing the suffering. What I am talking about is something different, that is at once deeper and more difficult, but also simpler. I am talking about leaning into and being grateful for the pain itself. What?!

Labor is a painful journey, as in fact is life. The funny thing about a journey is that we have to go through it to get to the end, but all we can experience and respond to is what is happening to us right now, in this very moment and instant, not the rest of the journey as I have experienced or as I might experience it. In this moment, I am alive, thank God. What am I experiencing right now? Maybe pain, maybe anger, maybe heartache, maybe overwhelming tiredness. What else am I experiencing? Maybe hunger, maybe tingling in some part of my body, maybe my lungs full of air. What else? Maybe the beginning of curiosity as I probe my experience with these questions. Maybe a spark of humor at the absurdity of asking these questions while I am in such pain. And just like that, the earlier moment has given way to another, new moment, and a new opportunity to feel and notice and respond. I am free to respond in whatever way I want to in this new moment and I am grateful for the new opportunity. By not fighting the pain I was able to arrive at this moment. And now what am I experiencing? What do I want to do in this moment? And look, now is another moment! What am I experiencing now, the same or different as I remember from before?

This mindset can be extremely helpful in coping with the journey of labor, and it is a mindset that can be cultivated and developed through practice. Take a moment to focus on whatever you are experiencing. One way to start is by bringing your attention to your breath, since as long as we are conscious we are also breathing. What other physical sensations can I become aware of? As a write this post, my feet are cold. I am eating a cookie that feels crumbly in my mouth. A spot on my head itches. I realize that my ability to notice these things means that I am alive in this moment, and I give thanks. I also have a passing thought about the extreme pain I felt when I was going through my divorce, and even though the event was long ago the memory, and maybe also the pain and the anger, surface in this moment. This also shows me that I am alive, right now, with a new freedom to experience and respond, and I give thanks. I have been through a journey and I will go through more journeys, but right now I have this moment of experience, of aliveness, and I give thanks.

It is not uncommon for me to hear a laboring woman, especially as she approaches “transition” or the phase of intensity just before it is time to start pushing, say “I can’t do this.” And I point out, “you are doing this. At this moment, you are showing that you do have the strength to do this, because you are doing it.” This moment is all that counts right now; in the next moment we will deal with what is happening in that moment.

Saint John Chrysostom, who was a great preacher in the fourth century and wrote the Divine Liturgy that is still in use in Eastern Orthodox churches today, encountered many challengers and ultimately ended his life in a difficult exile to the backwaters of what is now the nation of Georgia. In the midst of this turmoil, the final words of St. John were, famously, “Glory to God for all things!” There is a special hymn of Thanksgiving written by a certain priest who died in a Siberian prison camp in the 1940s, that draws on this phrase and recalls all the things that we have to be grateful in this moment, whatever suffering or other feelings we may be experiencing. It is called the “Akathist of Thanksgiving – Glory to God for all things!” . (In the Eastern Orthodox church, an Akathist refers to a specific form of poetry/prayer that is dedicated to God or a particular saint or event.) If you like to listen to Orthodox church music, you might want to add this recording to your labor playlist. In closing, here is one line from the Akathist of Thanksgiving that beautifully expresses the moment-by-moment acceptance and gratitude that we have been talking about:

Glory to Thee through every sigh of my sorrow; glory to Thee for every step of my life’s journey, for every moment of glory.