The Misblessings of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a feel-good holiday. Comfort food, cozy sweaters, and the first lights of Christmas going up in houses everywhere. Our gratitude lists as we go around the table on Thanksgiving day are typically just as "feel good." Just like my usual gratitude list that starts many of my journal-writing sessions:

• Coffee
• This warm house
• My favorite pen
• My favorite journal
• Both of my boys still sleeping quietly in their beds

These same items have been at the top of my list for the last 10 years. That's how long I've been waking up at 5am every morning to write in my journal: the place I've come to know myself, find my big dreams, and apparently make the same exact gratitude list over and over again.

As I was pouring my coffee this morning, knowing I was committed to writing this post today, I kept thinking: what's left to be said about Thanksgiving? It's a nice, thoughtful holiday born out of some not-so-nice things we did to the original inhabitants of our country to help us feel better about how we took it from them. When you look at it that way, maybe Thanksgiving could give us all a chance to dig a little deeper into our own gratitude, if we let ourselves.

We could start with my go-to gratitude list (nice, neat, honest, convenient) that doesn't in any way represent my struggles. And my struggles, at least as much as my blessings, have made me who I am. But I never think to give thanks for my divorce fifteen years ago, or for a childhood full of dysfunction. I give thanks to the "good things."

But I couldn't help but wonder today: what if I could find a way to be thankful for all of it, not just the parts worthy of sharing in my round at the Thanksgiving table?

This week, a dear friend and brilliant coach invited me into her program for next year, and it sounds amazing. In-person retreats, monthly training, support as well as tough love, and a community of women gathered around one goal: creating the lives we want. She provided a list of things we might fill in for ourselves: travel more, start a business, find a loving relationship, have a baby, buy a house. There were many more, most of which I've wanted desperately at different times in my life, many of which I help women work toward as a coach. But for some reason, as I looked at the list, nothing reached out and grabbed me. Not one thing whispered "let's play."

Maybe I can attribute it to the old saying you'll probably hear in your mom's voice as you read it: "Be thankful for what you DO have, dear." Or maybe, for the last 48 hours or so, I've felt free of the near-constant striving to create more, do better, be more, make a bigger difference, share more, shine brighter, earn more, and love like the movies tell you to.

Maybe, just maybe, this Thanksgiving week I'll trade in my surface-level gratitude list to share with a close friend how much the things that have been incredibly hard in my life have made me who I am. And now, perhaps for the first time, I'm able to open my heart and say "welcome, come in, sit down, and rest" to the misblessings I've been keeping at arm's length: the parts of myself that don't fit neatly into a round of shout-outs at the Thanksgiving table.

Maybe this year I'm learning, for the first time, how to hold the life I still long to create in one arm and the one I've been given in the other, loving them both at once, knowing that all the mess that's contributed to who I've become is exactly what's necessary for who I've yet to become.

All of this leaves me wondering: can you think of one messy bit of your life you can be thankful for this week? Would you be willing to share it? If not at the Thanksgiving table, perhaps with a close friend.