Gratitude on a Complicated Day
Thanksgiving is a complicated day. It carries real gratitude and real harm in the same breath. A celebration of abundance built on a story that erases Indigenous suffering. I’m learning to hold both.
This year I sat with what I’m grateful for without pretending the holiday is simple. I’m grateful for Becca. For her patience with this adventure and with me. She reads every word I write before anyone else sees it. She catches the moments when I’m performing instead of being honest. She’s the reason the work stays grounded.
I’m grateful for the people who have shown up for this adventure. Readers who leave comments that push my thinking. Friends who share their own stories about where love and fear show up. The community growing around this exploration isn’t something I built. It’s something that’s building itself.
And I’m sitting with the truth that this holiday exists on Indigenous land, shaped by a narrative that centers European settlers and erases centuries of harm. Some communities observe a National Day of Mourning instead. I understand why. The gratitude and the grief aren’t opposites. They’re both true.
That’s what the Heart-Strong Adventure keeps teaching me. Life doesn’t sort itself into neat categories of love and fear, good and bad, grateful and grieving. The practice is holding both. Not choosing one over the other. Not resolving the tension. Just being present to all of it.
Today I’m grateful. And today is complicated. Both are true.
Read the full piece on Substack
Learn more about the adventure at www.heart-strong.org
