thanksgiving day
Weekly Reading Topic for September 26, 2020:
Well, good morning, love! I just opened a Reading for you, my newsletter subscribers and here’s what I heard in answer to the following:
What do my readers most need to hear this weekend? What is the most important message to send to my beloved readers?
The answer was: “thanksgiving day.”
What follows is your weekly reading, dearest one.
Weekly Reading │ Thanksgiving Day
Q: What do we need to know about “thanksgiving day?”
A: Thanksgiving has come early this year! It’s time to give thanks for all the bounty we have in our lives.
The first Thanksgiving was nearly 400 years ago, and it took place in a cold, harsh winter where half the colonists died and nearly a thousand Native Americans were slaughtered. It was a brutal environment, a desperate time for all involved. Whether you were the invader or the invaded, you were suffering. It was a real 2020 of a year.
The Puritan faith taught its followers that they should regularly set aside days of thanksgiving. Whenever they experienced trials, they believed, they should set aside time to thank God for their blessings.
This tradition was the one they followed in 1621 when they had what we think of as “the first Thanksgiving.” Having a yearly feast to celebrate our bounty on the third Thursday of November is an American tradition … but we can (and maybe should) have thanksgiving days more often.
There are many things to be grateful for, even in the midst of trouble and turmoil. And setting aside a day to give thanks for them is as important to our mental, emotional, and physical health in 2020 as it was four centuries ago.
When you focus on gratitude, it expands your definition of “good.” And it helps you to feel grounded, and cared for.
Here’s the trick, though: in order to focus on the blessings in our lives, it’s sometimes important to acknowledge the harsh weather, the drought, the famine, the pestilence. It’s important to Be Here Now, which doesn’t just mean Be Present, but also means to get your shit together and look in the mirror and see the Truth — all of it.
We’re in an extraordinary time. There is a lot of turmoil and trouble. And sometimes we can’t just switch our attention from that comfortably. Sometimes, we find it next to impossible to turn away from the headlines and focus on our dog’s smile, or the smooth texture of the clean plate, or the perfect dapple of sun on the water.
That’s when it’s time to play a game called Mad Sad Scared Glad. If you’ve had a week of trouble, try this one. It’s best with a partner, but you can play it yourself with a pen and paper.
I got this game from therapist Natalie Tyler, Ph.D., and it’s been a huge gift in my life. The goal of this game is to FULLY express your feelings about anything and everything that comes up, without reservation. And it’s also to listen to your partner FULLY express their feelings about anything and everything that comes up, without reservation! (And if you do this alone, to listen to YOURSELF.)
Here’s how to play:
Sit with your partner and pick someone to speak first. The other person is the questioner. The questioner asks the speaker the same question, over and over, with no other comments or questions.
Here’s the first question:
“What are you mad at?”
The speaker answers “I’m mad about/that/at ____________”
No matter what is said, the questioner has only response:
“What else are you mad at?”
“I’m mad at _________.”
It doesn’t matter how trivial, how important, how mundane, how petty, how silly, how irritating or unfair what comes out is … the questioner only ever prompts more expressions.
“What else are you mad at?”
“What else are you mad at?”
“What else are you mad at?”
This goes on (and on and on depending upon what kind of week it’s been) until the speaker answers “I’m not mad at anything else.” Or maybe “I don’t know.”
At which point they are tapped out. They can’t think of a single other thing they are mad about. That’s when the questioner asks the second question:
“If you were mad about ONE more thing, what would it be?”
And the speaker always has ONE more thing they are mad about 🙂
Once you have fully exhausted the Mad session, the questioner IMMEDIATELY asks “What are you sad about?”
And the speaker answers, and the questioner prompts again, and gets an answer, and round and round they go until the speaker confesses they aren’t sad about anything else. At which point the questioner asks “If you were sad about ONE more thing, what would it be?”
And once that question is answered, the questioner prompts “What are you scared about?”
And so it goes. Once the full range of sorrows has been prompted and expressed, and the one last sorrow has been sad out loud, it’s time for thanksgiving.
“What are you glad about?”
“What else are you glad about?”
“What else are you glad about?”
And the speaker lists everything, everything they can think of that they are glad about.
And then the speaker becomes the questioner, and the questioner becomes the speaker, and at the end of the game, BOTH people have fully expressed every little thing they are Mad, Sad, Scared, and Glad about.
And they’ve done so without being interrupted, stepped over, blamed, corrected, or dismissed.
And they’ve both practiced listening to sometimes terribly unfair, horrible accusations from their most beloved, without doing or saying anything to defend or deflect … instead, just prompting another terribly unfair, horrible accusation.
This game is one of the most powerful ways I know to have a thanksgiving day any day of the year.
Because once you have fully acknowledged just how Shit Things Can Get, you are ready to acknowledge just how Wonderful Things Can Be.
This time is filled with strain and stress, and all of us are up against our worst fears, and we are exhausted. Playing this game is an excellent way to cope and maintain our balance.
Because this is not the time to engage in spiritual bypassing and ignore the actual, real dangers we all face. We have to do the work and face problems, whether they are our own or our collective problems. That’s the only way forward.
We’re all on the planet now for a reason, and finding that reason for ourselves is critical to Hold the Center.
(Hold the door!)
Just like in the winter of 1621, our houses may be flimsier than they thought, and they aren’t quite keeping the weather out. The food is not as plentiful as it used to be. And there is a conflict that has already drawn blood and looks to draw more before the year is over.
And yet, we still have time for thanksgiving days. We must take them. Otherwise, we may forget what we came here for.
So take as many thanksgivings as you need to. Indulge in thanksgiving days regularly. It’s good for your mental health and equips you to cope with this current time, the months to come, and to ready yourself for the spring, for next spring, when we will be able to gather food, and wood, and start to rebuild.
Happy thanksgiving day to you and your loved ones.
I appreciate you, and your attention, and your love.
I am always here to serve in any way I can.
Much Love to You,
Molly
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