You may remember that I have a lot of conflicted feelings about this particular holiday. I know I’ve talked about it before – the whole Pilgrim/Native American mess. So I don’t really think about that part of it anymore.

And there have been years that I was so aware of what a mess our country was that I almost felt guilty looking at all the things I had to be grateful for.

This year feels different. Not that the US isn’t a mess, or about to be – it surely is. But I have a new frame of mind, at least in some ways, at least for the moment. I don’t know that I can articulate it yet, but I feel better. Gratitude – or appreciation – bubbles up more easily.

One thing that has happened: I’m recognizing that I’ve spent a really long time NOT engaging with trauma, pretty much not engaging on any level. In fact, I’ve been working with groups and organizations that actively avoid trauma.

My avoidance got really strong in the first set of Trump years and then I tended to continue on that path. Of course, the more I avoided, the more I wanted to avoid. That’s how that works.

This year, I’m grateful that I’ve realized how important it is to reverse that trend. I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but I will be writing about trauma (not necessarily here, in my vanilla life) and reconnecting with the practices and perspective that I abandoned. I’m grateful for that.