I know how I feel but it\’s not easily translating into words today.
take what resonates, leave the rest, I guess.
As a white, suburban, American, I was raised to see this holiday as a celebration. In recent years, I\’ve been shown the error of what I was taught, what I believed, what is widely believed as a way of justifying it.
This day, that we Americans have been taught was a victory, is actually commemorating atrocities. Land theft. Genocide.
As an adult, I\’ve put a lot of energy into focusing on gratitude on Thanksgiving. I do my damndest (and fail all the time) to try to be grateful for the abundance of blessings in my life-most of them unearned privileges, or things accessible to me because of privilege.
AND
I go through shit. we all do. Some shit is harder than others, sometimes we have a lot and sometimes we catch a break for a long time.
So this year, having gone through a lot of my own shit (still going through a lot of it), a completely insane political situation and election, the raging-ever-worse pandemic, and all of the things that it is so hard to see, that I can\’t un-see in the last 4, 10, 30 years–white supremacy, misogyny, capitalism over humanity….
I am still going to try to choose gratitude.
Honestly?
Because it makes me feel better.
That\’s the truth.
it\’s not some spiritually evolved, selfless, new-age shit.
I feel better when I can access gratitude.
So here\’s what I really want to say:
I have found that accessing REAL gratitude is easier, more genuine, feels better, frankly, when I\’ve ALSO allowed myself to feel everything else. Anger. Bitterness. Grief. Fear. Fatigue.
They are not mutually exclusive.
Clear as mud, right? I spent so much of my youth and young(er) adulthood looking for the magic *click*, like a Lego, when I would get IT. what was IT? no clue. But I was always searching for something else, the next thing, the thing that would make me feel okay. Not be Highly Sensitive. not have PTSD. Not miss Amy. Not feel lonely. Not judge myself harshly. Not stress out about work or social issues or people I love suffering. About all the suffering.
And please, PLEASE do not think for a minute that I mean I\’ve let go of all of that. I haven\’t. But maybe…I\’ve made some peace with it?
(I told you….I couldn\’t find the words)
It\’s all valid, it\’s all real, it\’s all always changing. The love, the fear, the anger. the grief, the joy, the gratitude. All floating around together-so the bigger the container we give it, the better. The more room there is for everything, the more authentic and real and gritty and FUCKING AWESOME life can be. Even when we are triggered. Even when we are lonely. Even when we are deep in joy, with the bittersweet knowing that it, too, will ebb and flow.
Five years ago I was at a grief writing retreat with Megan Devine* on Whidbey Island in Washington State and we went to the ocean. There was a discussion about it that I cannot remember specifically, except for this:
\”perhaps the ocean is the only thing big enough to hold our grief.\”
I think it\’s not only a apt metaphor for grief, but for everything-and especially for the many things at once that feel so hard to hold together. The emotions that feel contradictory, like we have to pick one, which is not possible. We need a lot of space for that. Otherwise, we can become overwhelmed. It\’s too much. We need an ocean, where the waves just keep coming, breaking, receding, in a rhythm that is unbreakable.
There is room for all of it.
[image: waves breaking on the beach, under a mostly-blue sky, bright sun on left of picture]
*please check out Megan\’s community, Refuge In Grief, for an abundance of resources, online classes, and an unparalleled community where grief is given the true space it needs.