It is not only the physical body that gets infected

Thanksgiving was an opportunity to practice sovereignty over my emotional kingdom

The Holidays are a weird time for me. And for a lot of other people, for a lot of different reasons (dreary dendrophile wrote about this eloquently in this post). I am completely cognizant of this. So why do I feel like I still have to strive during the Holidays? I am not even completely sure what I am striving for at this point. I have been sitting with these feelings, trying to figure out where this pressure to get the holidays ‘right’ is coming from, and how to manage it, or maybe just feel it.

I don’t have answers, so I will be approaching this holiday season intuitively. I have practice doing this with my spiritual work, so why not apply it to all aspects of life? As I write this, I think “Duh, that is exactly what you are meant to be doing with your life now”. As I have been working on emotional sobriety, I realize more and more where I have given my power away because I do not feel I have the right to feel the feelings I am having. For me, emotional sobriety means not being emotionally diseased, for lack of a better way to describe it. Not infected with all the shoulds that conditioning has vectored into me using religion or marketing as opposed to mosquitos or droplets of sputum.

All those annoying shoulds invading my space Photo by Viktor Forgacs on Unsplash

For the last few years, I have hosted my mom and brother for the full Thanksgiving meal deal. Not turkey, but some main and a bunch of sides and desserts. The more solid I have become in my recovery and my own authority, the less comfortable I am with people who are in any sort of denial over their wafting shit. I will just say that my mom and brother have some demons which they may believe are safely locked away, but are as present at our get togethers as their human carriers. When my gang of punk demons were present as well, I was too distracted to notice others, but now it takes all my energy to accommodate the unwelcome invisible guests and resulting dissonance with reality. Plus, it was just a lot of work on my part, giving my one-butt kitchen more assignments than there is space.

In an effort to head off the nudges from my mom (who I have been tentatively back in touch with) and brother in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, I told them I really didn’t want to host this year. (No, they didn’t volunteer to do the honors; I am pretty sure it never crossed their minds).

A couple of days before Thanksgiving, I read this in Sue Kusch’s wonderful stack Fifteen Years and Counting:

Many years ago, I abandoned the ritual of preparing lavish feasts and adopted a simpler ritual of baking bread and pumpkin pie and making a big pot of soup for the day. The truth is I never liked the modern Thanksgiving menu of dry turkey, mushy green bean casserole, and sweet potatoes with that weird marshmallow topping.

It was like the proverbial record scratch moment. Hold on! Wait up! This (and many other things in her wonderful post) just completely resonated with me. This I could do. I love baking. I love soup. I gotta eat anyway. I also wanted to share the day with my one of three kids who shows up for every Thanksgiving and Christmas, usually with a wonderful friend and something yummy. I told my mom and brother my plan and that they were welcome to join me for a simple meal.

I made some delicious pecan blondies with butterscotch frosting the day prior. I soaked some grains overnight and made multi-grain bread Thanksgiving morning. I had time to workout and walk my dog, and room in my little kitchen to chop vegetables for the one dish I was preparing.

My sweet son and his lovely friend picked up my mom so I didn’t even have to use my car all day. They brought some sparkly (zero proof) beverages and ice cream to accompany the blondies. My dog had a major puppy parade when they showed up, and they didn’t mind the floof and dog-spit facewashings.

We ate thick slices of bread with butter and rosemary salt. We went back for seconds of soup. The kids and I walked Rei and saw the most beautiful sunset over the mountains and Sound. Mom napped while the twenty somethings and I chatted about changing the world and pulled Oracle cards and bibliomanced from a Thich Nhat Hanh book.

The night prior, my brother had texted, asking if I wanted him to bring some Steelhead. A subtle commentary on my soup plan not being up to snuff? Well, too bad. My house, my holiday meal. No thanks. I texted back. I want to have soup and bread.

He was a no show, but I am glad I stuck to my intuition guns.

I was free to feel only gratitude on the day that is supposed to be all about that anyway.