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Gratitude That Holds Everything
The real practice isn’t to feel grateful all the time—it’s to keep showing up, even when it’s complicated.
Gavin Kemp
April 27, 2025
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Welcome to the Final Week of The Shadow Side of Gratitude
Over the past six weeks, we’ve made space for the full range of human experience—resistance, longing, grief, rage, envy.
Now, we turn toward integration.
What does it mean to build a gratitude practice that can hold everything you’ve been through?
This week, we don’t tie a neat bow—we simply begin again, with deeper roots.
Week-by-Week Progress Tracker
Week 1: When Gratitude Feels Forced (Past Issue)
Week 2: The Guilt of Wanting More (Past Issue)
Week 3: Gratitude & Grief – Thankful and Heartbroken (Past Issue)
Week 4: Gratitude in an Unfair World (Past Issue)
Week 5: Envy, Shame, and the Comparison Trap (Past Issue)
Week 6: Holding Both – Rebuilding a Deeper Practice (You are here)
Opening Reflection
We’ve been through resistance, guilt, grief, injustice, and envy.
And now we’re here.
Not with answers.
Not with certainty.
But with something better:
Integration.
Gratitude that doesn’t flinch from the hard things.
Gratitude that includes the shadows.
Gratitude that doesn’t need to perform, because it belongs.
This Week’s Emotional Truth
There is no “final form” of gratitude.
There’s no medal for doing it right.
No perfect routine.
No final destination where everything feels light and clear.
What we can build is a practice that knows how to hold both—
Joy and loss.
Pride and longing.
Gratitude and grief.
This is the work.
This is the reward.
How to Hold This
Journaling Method: The Dual Lens Reflection
Think of one challenge in your life right now.
On one page, write about it honestly—what’s difficult, painful, uncertain.
Then, write again. Same challenge.
But this time, look for what’s still holding you.
The support. The growth. The flicker of something good.
Even if it’s just the fact that you’re still here, doing this work.
Need a nudge? Here’s one way it might look on the page…
The Challenge:
My creative work feels invisible. Like I’m shouting into a void.
I question whether it matters. Whether I should even keep going.
What’s Still Holding Me:
The quiet joy I feel when I write, even if no one sees it.
The one person who told me it helped them.
The fact that I still care enough to show up. That means something.
The Reframe
Gratitude doesn’t require you to be okay.
It only asks you to be honest.
To notice.
To hold the full weight of your experience—and still stay open.
Affirmation
“I can be tired and still hopeful.
I can be grateful and still healing.
I can hold both. I am holding both.”
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Gratitude Gem
“Gratitude isn’t about feeling good.
It’s about being fully alive.”
Call to Action
This week, don’t rush to write a perfect final entry.
Just reflect.
Where have you softened over the last six weeks?
Where have you been braver than you realised?
And where might you carry this gentler kind of gratitude into the days ahead?
Until next week,
Gavin
Daily Prompts and Affirmations
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