Is Thanksgiving About Food or Gratitude?
I love Thanksgiving. I love that there are no decorations to hang… well, not many… and it’s all about connection and food.
I usually cook for between 12 and 17 people each year, but this year due to my mother-in-law falling and breaking a hip, I am the one traveling.
This year it’s less about the food and all about the people.
Since I am usually in a cooking frenzy, I tend to overlook the thanks in Thanksgiving.
I don’t like to feel obligated to give thanks or feel thanks when it’s not organic. I am thankful in the moment.
But I know that you can’t feel fear and gratitude at the same time.
Gratitude rewires your mind to see abundance rather than scarcity.
This is huge.
So I am all in.
Let’s go waist deep in gratitude.
I realized that the challenge for me is conjuring up the things and situations I am thankful for. So I thought I would put together some prompts. Because once prompted, I certainly have multitudes I am thankful for.
Prompts:
Gratitude for food. I just saw statistics for my region. The percent of folks experiencing food instability this year was higher than I expected. I am thankful for the food I eat. I may even try making an indigenous food recipe for Thanksgiving. I feel lucky that I get to make that choice.
Gratitude for relationships. I am thankful for my husband and kids and extended family. And friends that feel like family.
I am thankful we all made it through COVID year two. And I am thankful for people who aren’t in my life any more who have helped me become the person I am.
Gratitude for pets and other animals. Who loves you no matter who you are, what you do, or how many servings of pumpkin pie you eat? I am thankful for all living creatures. Nuff said.
Gratitude for elastic (pants on Thanksgiving), sunshine, air, computers, refrigeration, reconnecting with old friends, a focused purpose, medicine, science, a great movie on Netflix, time in nature, walking, struggles, good memories, birds, music, the ER doctors and nurses, and clean socks.
And last but not least, gratitude for a full range of emotions. Happy is good, but it’s just scratching the surface. I am grateful for the whole bucket of emotions. Joy and humor and connectedness, but also sadness and anger and fear. Without fear I would not be daring. Without anger I would not be spurred to act on some things that are important to me. And the depth of my sadness measures how deeply I have felt about people I have lost.
I want the whole range of emotions that comes with a messy wonderful human life.
I think I need to drop the mic there and pick up the fork. After all, it’s still about the food too. 🙂