Honestly, we tend to focus so much on family gatherings, the cooking and the food and the time off or extra work involved in the holiday that the whole concept of gratitude can get a little lost. Over the years I've worked to ensure that at least at some point during the holiday meal we share or contemplate things we are grateful for. Which is fine and which we did this year and it was lovely. We shared our meal with my mom and dear friends and it was delightful and bountiful and the gratitude shared was heartfelt and sweet.
It was a hard holiday though. Holidays often are. They can dredge up every single personal issue you have ever had with yourself, other family members or the world and they can then magnify those things to scary proportions. Typically, for me, the holiday (any holiday) itself is fine but the day leading up and the day after can be...as they say...triggering.
So. I am left now, a few days later with unsettled feelings about those demons I know might never leave us but with a lot of gratitude and true thanksgiving for our ongoing dedication to facing them head on, battling with them, making mistakes, forgiving them, remembering the underlying love and goodness that brought us under this roof and accepting, grudgingly, that as always there is more work to do.
I gave everyone little cards this year to, if they chose, share their thoughts about what they might be thankful for this year. I wrote that mostly, I am thankful for second, third, fourth etc chances and this messy, loving, crazy family I share them with.
I'm always going to get a little crazy around big holidays because big expectations slay me. It doesn't help that with my oldest a junior in high school every holiday, every trip, every little thing feels close to "the last" (not the last ever, but last as a family with minor children). I can barely breathe when I get caught up thinking about that stuff.
Right here though. Right now. We're ok. And I'm grateful.
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