Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. What’s not to like about a day focused on enjoying a special meal with people* you care about and being thankful?

In the spirit of the season, I’d like to give thanks to You. Because of you—your reading, your comments, your emails—I have clarity I never had before:

I know who I am: A writer. (I am other things but previously that was a title I didn’t believe I deserved.)

I know who I write for: Curious, strong, smart, grown women who like to read and think and take action (and for those men who welcome their yin with their yang).

I know what this blog is about: Navigating the hard of life—the hard questions, the hard times, the things we don’t talk about.

I know what this blog is for: Comfort from knowing you’re not alone. A fellow traveler with whom to ponder the questions. Maybe a dash of hope.

I didn’t learn all that by sitting in the big wingback chair in my living room, contemplating. I learned it by writing. By writing for you and by reading what you wrote back. You touched my heart. You told me that this—this place, this connection—matters.

I’d like to give you something as a small way of saying thanks. It’s a physical something, which means I will need your physical address. Although I have many of your addresses, it’s good to be sure. Please know that your address is safe with me. I don’t share what isn’t mine to give.

If you’d like to receive this something (please say yes!), let me know where to send it, here. The Somethings are sent! There are no more Somethings for now.

The something won’t arrive this year, in this season of people and parties and presents, but in the bleak season that follows. The timing is for two reasons:

  1. The something is being hand made by someone with a waiting list. (I have other things this someone has made, and I love them.)
  2. I want it to arrive around another favorite holiday of mine: Groundhog’s Day. That day marks the halfway point of winter and there were years that was important to me.

Thank you for being here. I appreciate it.

*The ‘people you care about’ could be just one person if you have a Soloist Sanctuary holiday. As Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Let me be the love in the room, even if there is only one person in the room.”

PS: If you’re looking for something to do to ‘freshen up’ your Thanksgiving traditions, The Thanksgiving Reader is a fabulous idea.


Chewing the Cud of Good

Grateful for the intelligence of nature, who figured out a way for me to bring a seed pod back home without needing to hold it, and without putting it in my pocket where the tiny seeds would fall out and linger.

Fruit of the Sweet Gum tree, Liquidambar styraciflua. According to Wikipedia, “popularly nicknamed ‘burr balls’, ‘gum balls’, ‘space bugs’, ‘sticker balls’, ‘spike balls’.”

4 thoughts on “Giving Thanks”

  1. Let’s circle back to Groundhog’s Day being one of your favorite holidays. Is it because it is a ludicrous idea or is it because groundhogs are chubby and cute?

    1. Ahh… alas, it is not because groundhogs are chubby and cute, or the holiday is ludicrous, and it’s not because I love the movie Groundhog Day. It’s because I used to have a real problem with depression in the winter, which I now know is called “Seasonal Affective Disorder” or SAD (how appropriate). I think this was all tied up with my thyroid issues but whatever. The reason Groundhog Day was important to me was that it was my mile-marker, my signal that I had made it halfway to spring, and if I could make it halfway, I could make it the rest of the way. I could make it to Spring. Thank you for asking, Chris.

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