Thanks + Giving + Life

For most of our lives, we have individually and somewhat selfishly rejoiced and witnessed others take the time to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday traditionally and culturally. We have also seen such celebrations of all of the holidays to follow. Those holidays being Christmas Eve and Day, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, Hannukah, and New Year’s Eve and Day, among others and respectfully. We have taken the time to celebrate with our friends and family members with great intentions and hopes that we will see them year after year. We unquestionably feel that we will be allowed to tell them that we love them, hug them, thank them, turn our wrongs into rights, and even turn our distant relationships into more secure and healthy ones. Never in a million years do we think that telling someone you love them year after year would be sequestered. 

While many are still provided with these advantages, many families and individuals face holiday suffrages, meaning they’ve suffocatingly lost someone who held and still holds a special place in their hearts. They lost a person(s) where they could say their goodbyes, while others were denied that opportunity. 

Many people tackle the holiday challenges of loss and grief differently. Some find ways to cope. These coping mechanisms could result from spending time with other family members and friends they love. This coping mechanism is an impermanent distraction so they don’t have to think about their loss. Others do not find joy in the holidays and wish to be alone because the holidays will never be the same. They lacked the cognitive and emotional abilities to find joyfulness because the one person they spent their holidays with and who made them that much more important and meaningful is no longer in their lives physically, only spiritually and reminiscently. 

For all of you who still have those notable persons in your lives, whether they be a spouse, intimate partner, friend, child, acquaintance, leaf, branch, or root of a tree, or however you describe them, seize the moment. Enjoy your time with these people. Be kind. Thank them and tell them that you love them in an unintoxicating and unembarrassing way. Be authentic in defining the true nature of your love, compassion, empathy, and connectedness. Share your thoughts and definitively reveal what your love means and entails? 

I beg of you to release the grudges, smudges, and fudges. Release the bitterness, callousness, and resentment. Know that love is love, and love will always outshine and overshadow hatred and cruelty.

This is not an attempt to ask people to become the persons they are not. It is knowingly, unquestionably,  and not by chance that your true self, authentically and wholeheartedly, will be revealed.

Take time this holiday to redefine yourself and for the better, as even the good can be improved. Take this time to gain self-understanding and self-compassion and increase your levels of self-respect and dignity. The only way to produce and emit positive energy is to learn self-gratitude and develop an intrinsic and extrinsic understanding of a sense of self. 

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who decides to celebrate year after year and get the chance to spend it with the people they love the most. 

Happy Thanksgiving to all of the sick and shut-in and the persons who choose to spend this holiday alone, ruminating, reminiscing, and simply being grateful and thankful. Know that no matter your choice, to celebrate or not, there will always be something to be grateful for, whereas the common denominator for us all is unequivocally LIFE.