Still Thankful

A few days before Thanksgiving, I began realizing that this would be the first one since I became a mama without my Girl Child at the table. She is thousands of miles away in Ecuador, mostly doing well despite eating more guinea pig than she ever imagined and questioning her own ability to communicate on occasion.

She’s getting along with her host family and in her internship, and last week, Global Citizen Year brought all of the fellows in the country together for a multi day training at the beach. The timing was great since they were all away from their family and friends over the holiday in a country that doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving, but this gave them a celebration anyway.

For us here at home….well... 

Aside from the changing family dynamics and the awkwardness of that, our plans for the actual day and meal of Thanksgiving went from wishy washy to established to dropped to uncertain to recovered all within a few days..

I had been saddish and missing my out of town family that we generally spend the holiday with, but was happy to have local friends to celebrate and feast with instead. Unfortunately, the day before, the family ran into illness, and we decided to let them off the hook as far as hosting us.

Thankfully, another friend graciously invited us to join her family even though it was the last minute, and I momentarily felt at ease~ until it occurred to me that we might actually be an imposition / charity case, the thought of which of course led to me getting semi panicked and feeling like a displaced hobo. I like to think I'm alright when it comes to rolling with change, but....well...maybe not so much...

After a bit of wallowing in the made up dismay that the uncertainty caused in my mind, I looked around at my quiet and happy home and realized that yes indeed, I was being a dumb arse.

We were neither displaced, nor were we hobos~ I was just far from people I missed and feeling weird about what the heck family is and sort of out of place in my own nest.

But, I knew though that I had so much to be grateful for, and that I needed to just shut my whiny pie hole because shortly, it would be literally stuffed with pie amongst the mounds of other deliciousness.

Unfortunately, that realization didn’t keep me from feeling emotional ups and downs of what felt like serious proportions, but I got busy with making the baked brie (which is a flipping amazing concoction by the way!) and by the time we headed to eat and play games with our kind friends, my heart had calmed down and I was feeling grateful indeed.

A week later, despite some serious ponderings and upsets, mood swings and life with other people, I’m still feeling grateful (or at least attempting to put my focus on that, rather than the looming stressors)

I’m wondering though, why is the lead up to holidays that are supposed to inspire gratitude or joy or love so often stressful and depressing?

It probably has to do with expectations or some enlightened philosophy that I don’t quite yet have, but for now, I want the rest of my holidays to be as jolly as they can be. 

Thinking of gratitude, I remembered some journal prompts that I created a few Thanksgiving’s back. Since being grateful is always in season (and because I suspect I’m not the only one who occasionally freaks out and gets side tracked from being thankful during the holidays) I wanted to share them again here.

For your downloading pleasure~ please enjoy and share some of the things you are thankful for in the comments. And feel free to share with a friend while you’re at it! 

Hoping this season is bringing you joy and many, many things to be grateful for!