A few years ago, I was driving to Michigan to go to my best friend’s wedding when I got a call a few hours out of town that there was a fire. I got a call from this fireman, and he asked if I lived in the unit where the fire was. I told him no. And he said, “Okay, good, good, good.”

Then he called back and said, “I got the wrong address. You don’t live at this address, do you?” And I said yes. And he said, “I’ve got some bad news.”

What had happened was the downstairs neighbors were being very irresponsible and started a fire, and our whole place was destroyed. And we were right in between insurance policies on our renter’s insurance, and so I started to feel that panic and dread. On my way to celebrate a wedding and have no house to go back to. All our stuff was destroyed.

It later turned out that what wasn’t destroyed was stolen because, of course, the whole place was empty. So I started to feel that panic and that anger and that overwhelming feeling of chaos, like the whole world has come crashing down.

And then I remembered something: I’m not at home. My family wasn’t at home. And the way this fire burned, our one fire escape would have been blocked, and we would have had to run through fire. And we might not have made it.

I just felt this overwhelming wave of gratitude hit me. I mean, we had just left the house. We work from home almost all the time; we’re at our house 95% of the time. And we were gone for a couple hours when this tragic event happened. But everything that really mattered was okay.

No matter how dark a situation is, there is something to find gratitude for. And we can always pick up the pieces. We can always rebuild. We can always take solace in knowing that everything changes, no matter how bad the situation.

And we can always be grateful for our awareness, for our presence, for our ability to find that gratitude, to recognize it, and to know that we all have that capacity to, through gratitude, get back to a life where we can heal from trauma, be happy again, and grow. It just takes being willing to open our eyes and look around for that sliver of hope, and it’s always there.

If we can just be present and sit with whatever we’re feeling, we can be grateful that we can sit with that feeling. Gratitude is more powerful than any loss, any tragedy, any pain, or any anger, and it is always available to us.