:: before gratitude, comes this…. ::

I’ve got this super-dominant authenticity gene — always have.

It’s one of my favorite things about myself, although it can definitely lead to overthinking things. 

Things like holidays and the sharing of holiday-driven sentiments and gifts.

I can get really hung up on whether the card or gift or thought or thing was done or shared or given because it’s really true, or if it was more about the giver playing the societally-assigned role of the day.

And I get really moody if I feel like I’m involuntarily playing a part in someone else’s mental holiday pageant.

I’m working on letting go of all that baggage and just receiving things as they come.

Letting go of what any of it means beyond the face value expression.

This is a work in progress ;)

But as such, Thanksgiving day gratitude doesn’t always feel so good to me.

I’m grateful often and share it most of the time anyway.

If for whatever reason I don’t feel particularly moved on this day to emote my gratitude, or am having some difficulty connecting to it, I really resist getting all touchy feely grateful just because someone’s telling me to.

And the implication that I might be somehow less than because I’m not participating according to those rules?

Well, let’s just say that that brings me just a little bit further from that happy gratitude place ;) 

So I’ve been thinking about this today, and about how I want to feel tomorrow, on Thanksgiving Day.

I want to feel grateful.  I do.

But not just as niceties are shared around the medley of nostalgic starches on the table.

I want to feel toe to top and below and above and deeper and higher grateful, like with every step my feet can touch a magic that will carry me everywhere I care to go.

And like with every magic-cradled step, I shake loose a little sparkle that floats down through time and space and comes down as glitter dust over all my loved ones near and far.

Like we’re all connected and we all see the beauty and divinity within each other.  

I want to smell the smells and hear the sounds and taste the goodness and touch the things and see it all.  Vividly.  Crisply.  Fully.

I want to be saturated, satiated, and surrendered.

And I think I know how to get there.

The only way to experience it all for real and fully is to really actually be there.

And to stay there.

When it gets difficult or awkward or uncomfortable or confusing or so amazing you feel like you can’t even stand it.

Stay with that.  Let go of the armor and the walls and the pretenses.  

Feel it.  Show it.  Share it.  And see what comes next.

Of course who knows what the day will bring and how easy or difficult it will be to actually live this.

But I know I’m going to start my day in meditation on this intention and see where it goes from there.

I invite you to do the same.

Decide how you want to feel tomorrow and really let yourself feel it in its fullness in a quiet stolen moment however you need to find it.

Pick a word or a phrase and make it your mantra as you do what you do on this day.

And let that sacred act open the pathways for more of what you want in your day.

(Mine is going to be I am saturated, satiated, and surrendered.)

To those of you who aren’t celebrating this day, and to those of you reading this afterwards anyway,  I invite you to celebrate whatever day you’re starting in exactly the same way.

Why not make every day a holyday?

Ever grateful for you, you lovely, lovely bloom.

P.S.  These two songs that I posted this time last year are still some of my favorite for getting me present and grounded and open:

“Speigel im spiegel” by Arvo Pärt, as performed by Angèle Dubeau and La Pietà

“Trois Gymnopédies:   No. 1” by Erik Satie, as performed by Anne Queffelec: