Well, it’s that time of year when Americans go all out preparing for the holidays, starting with Thanksgiving. 

Some things will always stay the same.

There’s turkey and all the fixings. The grandma recipes come out, and families gather from far and wide to reunite over a full table.

Okay, the Walmart Turkey Basket might be smaller, and grocery prices could be higher, and ICE might be watching the local bodega and carnicería, but people will still find ways to give thanks for everything they have. Even if it’s not much. 

Hell, at least they’re breathing.

It is a nostalgic touch.

This is also the time of year when the origins of Thanksgiving are revisited.

We all know the classic story: The Pilgrims and Native peoples came together to celebrate a harvest. They shared a meal and lived happily ever after. 

Americans enjoy their myths. They use them to avoid hearing the plain truth about American history, preferring to hold onto fictional stories to boost their spirits. 

That’s why all the efforts to ban Critical Race Theory (as if they even know what it is) and to purge museums and national parks of anything that threatens the traditional version of American history. I mean, we don’t want to make little white kids feel guilty or little black kids feel superior. 

But I digress.

No less than the Smithsonian Magazine has a version of the beginnings of the holiday (how is this still online?).

In “The Myths of the Thanksgiving Story and the Lasting Damage They Imbue,” David Silverman, a history professor at George Washington University, claimed that much of what we believe about the first Thanksgiving is a myth filled with lies, uh, I mean, historical inaccuracies.

According to Silverman, the truth starts with the pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth in 1620. It seems the local native chief, Ousamequin, suggested an alliance to the new neighbors, “primarily as a way to protect the Wampanoags against their rivals, the Narragansetts.” 

Silverman explains how that alliance withstood an onslaught of “colonial land expansion, the spread of disease, and the exploitation of resources on Wampanoag land.”

You know, like that old saying about offering peace with one hand while secretly taking what you want with the other. 

For the modern-day Wampanoags, Thanksgiving has a whole different meaning: “a day of deep mourning, rather than a moment of giving thanks.”

But I digress again.

“We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated.” — Maya Angelou, poet, writer, civil rights activist.

The past 43 weeks and 4 days, 305 days, 7320 hours, 439,200 minutes, 26,352,000 seconds (yes, I’m counting) have been, to put it mildly, a shitstorm of panic, depression, isolation, despairing of those who believe this is a hoax, that this can’t be real, that this is not what they voted for.

The reality of fear for our families and friends who have had to endure loved ones being taken from the streets of our cities and towns—screaming, crying, helpless—and just wishing it would all finally go away, while being scared it might never. 

Well, at least I’m thankful I’m alive.

But I digress.

Small comfort to those who will not be able to celebrate this holiday because they are gone, or going, and the families left behind will have “a day of deep mourning, rather than a moment of giving thanks.”

Those words should be engraved on every wall and street that this is “a day of deep mourning, rather than a moment of giving thanks.”

“This ain’t something to mess with.”

But I digress.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
– Nelson Mandela

For years, since Donald Trump started the apocalypse, I’ve been saying that the chaos was just beginning.

Like an epidemic, the diseases of hate and the desire to return to a time that never existed would spread across this nation. It’s hard not to worry about where this country is headed.

I mean, we are more divided than we have been since the Civil War. 

The Civil Rights and Vietnam eras have nothing on today.

Every day, we struggle with inflation, skyrocketing prices for everything, job losses and changing jobs, trying to get back to normal when we’re unsure what normal even is anymore, all while hoping that normality is just around the corner. 

At least I’m alive, some would say.

But I digress

There was a day back when I was a drunk and drug addict, I would have seen these days as an excuse to get more drunk and take more drugs.

Here’s what fourteen years of sobriety have taught me:

All that stuff happening outside of you is just that — happening outside of you. It only affects you if you let it. You have some wild idea that you need to feel bad because that’s the only way to live. 

Who thinks like that? Oh yeah, drunks and drug addicts.

I am no longer that person, so I won’t allow that negativity into my mind and body. Instead, I choose to welcome peace within myself. My family, close friends, and a supportive community are all I need to live peacefully. 

That’s what I am thankful for.

The paths we choose to walk are our decision if we would just tell ourselves that mindful peace is our destination.

We may still be walking toward it and have not reached it yet, but that’s okay.

I’m thankful to learn that I have that option and that all the other self-destructive stuff is disposable.

I have the power to live a peaceful life, and I am grateful for that.

“We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

I will work to help my neighbors and my community who live in fear and feel helpless to find that peace.

They deserve it also.

But I digress.