How Is It Already Thanksgiving Again?

This year has been the mother of all time warps. A mashup of Groundhog Day and Back to the Future. Each of the days spent visiting my mother in rehab or languishing on the couch with a fractured spine lasted at least a week. And yet wasn’t it just yesterday that a shiny new year was starting? A year that held so much promise?

Not gonna lie. For me, this year has been one of the most difficult in a while and I’ll be happy to get some distance from it. We’re already back to the holidays, a challenging time of the year for me at best (you can read about that here), and it would be so easy to rail against all of the pain and sorrow and disappointment of recent months. To give up on my efforts to forge ahead and rewrite the narrative. To forget the power of gratitude to turn things around.

Old me would have scoffed at the thought that gratitude was due after a year like this. Work-in-progress me knows, viscerally, that there is always something to be grateful for. Always. Sometimes you just need to remind yourself of your great good fortune.

So, I start with the fact that I’m free after so many years of toxicity; that I’m fully awake and in charge of my life. That I’m no longer “old me”. That I’m blessed to be able to provide for myself and my daughter. That my healing has led to self-love and confidence, which in turn has resulted in my finally daring to write. That I have a small but strong, mutually supportive inner circle.

And then there are the one-offs this year brought: my work being presented to good reviews at the local arts venue; a fabulous river cruise on the Seine, an unexpected windfall.

I’ve also remained on the lookout for the small joys that make a difference: choosing and arranging fresh flowers for my home; an unexpected phone call from a loved one; the arrival of the first cool mornings in the fall; the young lab tech lighting up while discussing our mutual love of words. These are really endless once your perspective shifts and you begin to take note of them.

The newest category of my gratitude list, feeling grateful to myself for something, has proved especially important in this year of relative immobility and isolation. I’m grateful for my resolve to push through when I wanted to give up. For the many times I did my physical therapy when I’d rather have done literally anything else. For the times I’ve sat down to write when distractions beckoned. For the times I’ve listened to myself and been able to say no. Or yes.

I think I’m most grateful to myself for resolving to practice gratitude no matter what. For giving it the thought and energy it deserves and imagining new ways to make it manifest. Because neither of us is a fan of turkey, or convention, today the CWP and I will be attending a matinee of Wicked at which we’ll probably nosh on chicken tenders. At some point I’ll be making a gratitude chain, a craft I instituted when my children were young, where each colorful link is inscribed with something, or someone, I’m grateful for. At the end of the day, I’ll light my cinnamon candle and sip a cup of sweet tangerine tea and reflect on the wonder and abundance of my life.

Happy Thanksgiving. I’m grateful for your support and feedback. May the holidays be kind to you.