The Missing Name on Your Gratitude List: Why Parents of LGBTQ Kids Need to Include Themselves

In today's episode, we'll explore why it is so important to be thankful for, well, you. Welcome to More Human, More Kind, the podcast helping parents of LGBTQ+ kids move from fear to fierce allyship and feel less alone and more informed so you can protect what matters, raise brave kids, and spark collective change. I'm Heather Hester. Let's get started. Thanksgiving teaches us to be grateful for everything and everyone except ourselves. Today we are rewriting that story because the gratitude you offer others is incomplete without you. By the end of this episode, you'll understand why self-directed gratitude rewires your brain for resilience. And why your nervous system needs it now more than ever. You will identify where your gratitude list leaves you out of the equation and how to gently bring yourself back into that circle of care. And you'll learn a simple 3-minute ritual that helps you anchor appreciation in your body, not just your mind, especially during emotionally complex Welcome to More Human, More Kind. I'm Heather Hester. This week, as so many of us in the US prepare for Thanksgiving, with all of its history, complexity, beauty, and chaos, I want to shift the conversation. Instead of talking about what we're grateful for, I want to explore the gratitude we almost never name. The gratitude for ourselves. Somewhere between caring for everyone else and keeping life moving, we forget that we too deserve to be appreciated. Today, we're reclaiming that. We are taught to be thankful for things, for our families, for our health, for our jobs, but rarely do we direct that gratitude to ourselves. We say things like, I'm grateful for my kids. I'm grateful for my partner. I'm grateful for my home, but not, I'm grateful to myself for showing up when it was hard. We talk a lot about the importance of having a gratitude practice. The benefits range from simple grounding to shifting our mindset from lack to plenty, to manifesting our hopes and dreams for the future by stating gratitude for those manifestations now. How many times in that practice do we include ourselves? And going just a few layers deeper, How honest or authentic are we in our gratitude? Here's the truth that we do not talk about enough. A lot of gratitude that we see publicly or online is curated, a highlight reel, a performance, a list we believe we should write rather than what we genuinely feel. Authentic gratitude is something else entirely. Authentic gratitude includes the joy and the ache, the wins and the wounds, the resilience you didn't choose, but you built anyway. The ways you grew, even when you didn't want to. The people who held you. And the person who kept going. You. Authentic gratitude isn't shiny. It's honest. It's the kind that lets you say, I'm grateful for my family, and I'm also grateful I survived a really hard year. I'm grateful for my child's identity and grateful for how much I've unlearned to love them better. I'm grateful for joy, but also grateful for the clarity that came through grief. Gratitude doesn't erase what hurt or hurts. It sits beside it. In fact, researchers at Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center note that gratitude is most powerful in complex emotional landscapes. Not in perfect ones. It's the coexistence of gratitude and grief, gratitude and uncertainty, gratitude and exhaustion that creates emotional authenticity and stability. Authentic gratitude says, "This year didn't break me, it shaped me." On a really personal note, my gratitude practice that I started way back when Connor was away is the practice that helped keep me grounded and strong during the scariest days. It allowed me to come back to center, to anchor in what was true, not all of the very real scary situations that were happening. The fear and the overwhelm that at that time exposed every shadow, every one of my frayed nerves, and kept my nervous system in the most activated state of dysregulation. Taking Those few moments every day to write, "I am grateful for..." both the present and the future, not only saved me, but also helped me grow and evolve in ways I never would've thought possible. Studies from UC Davis show that regular gratitude practice increases optimism and sleep quality. But follow-up research from Harvard Health adds a nuance. Gratitude that includes self-compassion strengthens emotional regulation far more than external gratitude alone. In other words, thanking yourself changes your chemistry. So maybe the missing name on your gratitude list is your own. If this feels just completely foreign, let's just take a moment to practice. So if you are in a place where you can just take a minute, take a breath, I want you to take one deep inhale and one slow exhale. Now, either in your mind or out loud, name 3 moments this week when you showed care for others or yourself. And then say aloud, "I am grateful to myself for..." and finish the sentence. This practice isn't arrogance, it's acknowledgement. The nervous system reads it as safety. We'll get to the rest of the episode in a moment, but if you like this show, please make sure to subscribe, leave a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. So going back to gratitude, I will be honest, the first handful of times I tried this, It felt awkward and honestly a little self-serving, even insincere. As a former people pleaser, one who had no clue what a boundary was and thought my purpose was to make sure I contorted myself to ensure the comfort and happiness of everyone else around me. This was a really extremely uncomfortable practice, but I kept at it, sprinkling it in with my other gratitude for people, places, hopes, big dreams. And after a time, I realized I had been starving for my own appreciation. For recognizing me and saying thank you to me. And that's the moment that gratitude became nourishment. Before we close today, I want to offer you a tiny act of kindness, something so simple that you can do it in less than 30 seconds. Place one hand over your heart. And take a slow breath in and out, similar to what we just did. Now, this time I want you to whisper to yourself, I'm doing a good job. I'm doing a good job. Not perfect, not better than last year, just a good job. And let that land. Let it soften something inside of you. Most of us are starving for the kindness we so freely give to everyone else. And hearing your own voice offer gentleness to your nervous system is powerful because it cues safety. It quiets shame and it builds emotional resilience from the inside out. This is your reminder: kindness begins at home, inside your own body. So today's quick Unlearn segment is this: the myth says that gratitude means ignoring what's hard. Let's reframe that to gratitude and grief can coexist. One doesn't cancel out the other. In fact, gratitude in the middle of the mess is often where it is most potent and most real. Tonight, write one sentence that begins, "Even in the mess, I'm thankful for..." and finish the sentence. When we unlearn performative gratitude, we rediscover grace. For ourselves and for everyone else around us. As we wrap up today's reflection, take one last slow, generous breath, the kind you rarely give yourself. You give so much to your family, your work, your community. My hope is that something in today's reflection allowed you to turn a bit of that generosity inward. To remember that you deserve to be on your own gratitude list. As you move into the holiday season, whether you are surrounded by loved ones, navigating complicated family dynamics, or finding quiet space for yourself, I hope that you carry the following truth with you. Gratitude is not something you give away at the expense of yourself. It is something you offer from the fullness of who you are becoming. New episodes of More Human, More Kind drop every Tuesday and Friday. And if you are ready to release fear, shame, or outdated patterns in your life, I'm accepting a few private clients right now. You can learn more at morehumanmorekind.com. Until next time, be gentle, be honest, and be beautifully, courageously human.