When Gratitude Sounds Like a Breath, Not a Blessing
- 5 days ago
- 3 min read
By Erin Snow Founder of Seacoast Listening Lounge
Gratitude didn’t show up for me in the easy, Instagrammable ways. It wasn’t a gratitude journal or a list of wins. It wasn’t something I felt when life was going smoothly. In fact, it arrived during one of the most isolated, confusing times of my life.
I was in the middle of a divorce no one knew about. My father was in the throes of Alzheimer's. I didn’t tell anyone. Not my friends, not my family. I was surrounded by people, but I didn’t feel safe enough to speak. I didn’t want to be judged. I didn’t want to explain. I just wanted to feel understood. And I didn’t know where to go for that.
At the time, I’d been working in legal aid for nearly 17 years, most of it with survivors of domestic violence, listening to women tell stories that had never been heard outside a courtroom. They came to me with their deepest pain. And again and again, I noticed that what they needed most wasn’t just legal help. It was space. Permission. A witness.
And I understood that, because I needed it too.
So one day, sitting on the beach with my second husband, I said, “I think I want to start a business where I just…listen to women.” He asked if that was even a thing. I said, “It’s going to be.”
That decision, leaving my legal career to create a space that didn’t exist yet, was the boldest move I’ve ever made. I didn’t do it for a business plan. I did it because I was tired of hearing women whisper their truths into silence. I did it because I needed to believe we all deserve a space where we don’t have to perform gratitude. We can just feel it, quietly, once the weight lifts.
That’s what Seacoast Listening Lounge became: a space where people come to lay things down. Where they aren’t asked to fix themselves, reframe the story, or take action. They’re simply allowed to be honest.
And that’s where I’ve come to understand gratitude in its most unexpected form.
It doesn’t always sound like “thank you.” Sometimes, it sounds like a long pause. A deep breath. Tears. A client saying, “I’ve never said that out loud before.” Or, “I didn’t realize how much I needed this.”
That’s what I’ve built my business around, the quiet kind of gratitude that grows not from solving problems,
but from finally being heard without judgment.
It was risky to walk away from the career I had built. I didn’t have a blueprint. Just a gut feeling, and a lot of lived experience. But what I’ve learned is that gratitude isn’t just a reflection on what’s going well; it’s a recognition of what we’ve survived. What we’re still carrying. And what becomes possible when someone meets us in that place with empathy, not advice.
I started Seacoast for the version of me who had nowhere to go. And every day, I get to offer others the thing I once needed most: a space to be real, without fear of how it sounds.
That’s what I’m most grateful for. Not the outcomes, but the opportunity to make people feel a little less alone.
Connect With Erin
Comments