Last Thanksgiving, right before the prayer over turkey and mashed potatoes, our extended family held hands in a circle and were invited by the host to share what we are thankful for.
I love these people.
But I began to sweat.
Of course, I could find something to say.
But I didn’t feel like it.
Day after tomorrow, will it happen again?
Will I resent having to “come up with something”?
And now, writing these words (as I had at that moment nearly a year ago), I’m assailed by the self-recriminating onslaught of familiar who-do-you-think-you-are and how-dare-you and look-how-good–you-have-it and at-least-it’s-not thoughts.
All these self-imposed, all-or-nothing hyphenated cuties are meant to obliterate reality so that I can spit out something gracious and easy on the ears.
My remedial lesson #fourteenthousandtwentytwo:
Two opposing ideas can be true simultaneously.
I’m thankful, and I’m also a little pissed off.
If you’re a little thankful and a lot pissed off or a lot thankful and a little pissed off, you can have a seat at my table; better yet, I will stand with you and hold your hand.
And if those don’t apply to you at all, and you’re just a juicy Butterball of thankfulness and giggly-goofy joy, then I hope your Nirvana is catchy—in that gentle way, of course. You don’t necessarily have to be the cashier at Trader Joe’s to get your point across. However you come, I’ll sit or stand with you and hold your hand.
It’s a come-as-you-are party.
As for me, this quote nails my gratitude goals for Thanksgiving 2024 and beyond. Living peaceably with the grief and gratitude paradox—and a hopeful path forward into me 2.0:
“We can recover a faith in grief that recognizes that grief is not here to take us hostage, but instead to reshape us in some fundamental way, to help us become our mature selves, capable of living in the creative tension between grief and gratitude. In so doing, our hearts are ripened and made available for the great work of loving our lives and this astonishing world. It is an act of soul activism. –Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow
Welcome.