25 Quotes To Help You Feel Gratitude This Thanksgiving

Being grateful is a wonderful concept, but it is a challenge when our children are struggling.

The empty chair at the dinner table is painful for parents and other family members.

When our children with substance use issues are absent from the Thanksgiving table, it can be for a variety of reasons:

Your child may be in treatment.
Feeling embarrassed by their situation, your child may choose not to attend.
Your child’s situation has gotten the better of them and they are not in good enough shape to attend a Thanksgiving meal.
Your child may have lost the battle with addiction due to overdose.

The toll this takes on a parent’s health is tremendous. If you will be missing your child this Thanksgiving, remember to take care of yourself, practice self-compassion, and keep things simple.

Make this holiday something that works for you. Make it a day that you can remember with peace and joy. You may not have everything you deserve this Thanksgiving, but be grateful for those who are there and for what you do have.

Your life can begin to change when you feel gratitude.

Let’s all take a moment and send our good thoughts to those families who are missing their children on this Thanksgiving Day.

Know that you are not alone.

Here are 25 Gratitude Quotes to help you through your day:

Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart. ~ Seneca
There is a calmness to a life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy. ~ Ralph H. Blum
God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” ~ William A. Ward
Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. ~ G.B. Stern
Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. ~ Henry Ward Beecher
Gratitude is the memory of the heart. ~ Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French
Sometimes it is a matter of changing your perspective, but I believe there is always something to be grateful for. ~ Tina Swithin
Peace comes from being aligned with the present moment. Wherever you are, you feel that you are home–because you are home. ~ Eckhart Tolle
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive– to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. ~ Marcus Aurelius
We are never more than one grateful thought away from peace of heart. ~ David Steindl-Rast
This is what grace looks like: amazing gratitude and relief at your plain old gorgeous life. ~ Anne Lamott
Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility, to give something back. ~ Anthony Robbins
Be thankful when you don’t know something for it gives you the opportunity to learn. ~ Unknown
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~ Melody Beattie
Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. ~ William Arthur Ward
Happiness is in itself a kind of gratitude. ~ Joseph Wood
To be upset over what you don’t have is to waste what you do have. ~ Ken S. Keyes
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. ~ Lao Tzu
Appreciate is an excellent thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us, as well. ~ Voltaire
The more light you allow within you, the brighter the world you live in will be. ~ Shakti Gawain
If you concentrate on what you don’t have you will never, never have enough. ~ Oprah Winfrey
The trick is to be grateful when your mood is high and graceful when it is low. ~ Richard Carlson
Live simply. Dream big. Be grateful. Give love. Laugh lots. ~ Paulo Coelho
No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks. ~ James Allen
There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle, or you can live as if everything is a miracle.” ~ Albert Einstein