I'm not Grateful

Years ago, when I first cut contact with my mom, I had more than a few friends (and family), whose mothers had died, say, "Be grateful for your mom. At least you have a mother."

In all actuality, I've had 3 mothers, none of which worked out really, but I digress. 

To them, I'd say that our traumas just aren't comparable and it's unfair to make me compare them. You lost a caring, loving mother too young and I am choosing to walk away from an abusive mother. They're not the same traumas! A living mother isn't better than a dead one if the former is abusive. Instead, can't we both bond over feeling motherless? 

It's the forced gratitudeI find most grating. Be grateful for my trauma? Excuse me? 

I would never tell someone grieving their dead mother to be grateful, because at least their mother loved them. I would never! Because it negates their grief. 

"Just be grateful for x, y, and z because I didn't have x, y, and z and so can't relate to your lived experience and so therefore it is invalid."

Adoptees hear all the time how we should be grateful for our adoptions because at least we weren't aborted. What an asinine argument, I say. If I'd be aborted, then I wouldn't exist and I wouldn't know I didn't exist. My adoption was traumatic and, while I believe in coping with reality and not living in a fantasy of what-if, asking me to be grateful for trauma is bullshit and insensitive and invalidating. 

But it goes all kinds of ways doesn't it? 

The other day, in an adoption support group I'm in, a fellow adoptee was seeking advice because her birth mom was not respecting her boundaries. The number of responses of, "Just be grateful she wants to know you!" was astounding to me and I thought of my experience years earlier. I could very well have responded with, "Well my birth mom is dead so be grateful yours isn't!" 

But of course I didn't say that, because it would be invalidating her experience. The girl wanted help with boundaries and so that's what I helped with. 

You don't have to be grateful for something that hurts you or doesn't respect you or makes you uncomfortable. 

I can think of a million examples of this that I've actually heard people say
(content warning: all of these are offensive): 

Pregnancy killing your body? At least you can get pregnant!

It's hard being a mom? At least you can have kids!

Your job is sucking out your soul? At least you have a job!

That man hurt you? At least someone wants you!

Oh you're sick or disabled or in chronic pain? I KNOW SOMEONE WHO HAS IT WORSE!

I'll stop there, because I think you get it. 

Trauma is trauma. And competing or even dismissing others' trauma doesn't help anyone. 

I said to a friend just the other day that acknowledging that we all have trauma of some kind doesn't dilute the trauma or make it less valid. Everyone's trauma is valid. But acknowledging that we all go through something should make us feel less alone, should create solidarity and a network of people who know what pain is like and know how hard it is to cope alone. How empowered would we all be if we stopped comparing and started sharing instead? Started supporting no matter what different pain we all carry? 

I will never feel grateful for my trauma, but I do love finding community and others that are hurting too and feeling strength in numbers, as it were. I love feeling less alone when I find my people. It doesn't matter that one friend lost her mom to a death and I to abuse. It doesn't. We can still support each other in our respective pain and find joy in our friendship instead.