Gratitude doesn’t deny the hard stuff. It just refuses to let the hard stuff take all the room.

Thankfulness is not a denial strategy. Done honestly, it does not require you to pretend the bad thing is smaller than it is, and anybody who tells you to be grateful instead of sad is asking for something else entirely. What it does is stop the difficulty from occupying the entire room. The hard thing stays the size it is, and other true things get to exist beside it.

Name one real difficulty this week without softening it, then name two things you would genuinely miss. Keep them both on the same page. Neither cancels the other out.