Thanksgiving in the U.S.: What it means to me (this year)

I was inspired to write this post for a couple reasons:

• my fiancé has been writing a similar post on his blog – which got me to thinking about the subject as a whole; and,
• my oldest friend, whom I’ve been friends with since Kindergarten (and I just turned 51 today!), had an appointment today to find out if she had cancer or not (spoiler alert: she doesn’t, and I am beyond thankful!!! And, oldest friend, if you happen-chance to read this… love you tons, even if we busy lives means we don’t talk as often as we used to! 🩷)

It’s been a week that has felt “all over the place”, and it’s only Monday!

(ever have weeks like that?)

As I’m sitting here writing this on the evening of my 51st birthday, another fact was pointed out to me by my son and another dear friend: I haven’t stopped today. I’ve been working — either actual business work, or working/cleaning the house — all day.

Both of those trains of thought collided, and stopped me on my (parallel) tracks.

Sometimes we humans get so focused on the endzone… the long game… the big goal… that we are pushing toward, that we simply forget to just STOP.

Today is my 51st birthday, and while it was a great day, and I had a lot of smiles and laughs with my son and my fiancé, and received a ton of social media birthday wishes (my fingers are going to cramp up replying to them all, I think!), at no point today did I just stop and BE…

STOP and take it all in.

STOP and celebrate ME.

It occurs to me that we humans do exactly that WAY too often, and before you know it, another year has passed, another birthday or Thanksgiving is upon you, and you wonder where the last months went.

It feels as if we are supposed to find things to be thankful for this time of year more than any other — it is Thanksgiving week here in the U.S. after all — but maybe we should be cultivating more mindfulness about being thankful and PRESENT for the journey to that endzone… to that big goal… to that long game… rather than just hustling, bustling, rushing, and working ourselves to the bone to achieve it.

If we could do that, maybe, just maybe, we could be consciously thankful a bit more every single day rather than just when we gather around a feasting table once a year.

I’m a business owner – so, yes, of course I’ve been marketing all of the “Black Friday” sales this week, and offering discounts on services and products that are larger than I’ve ever offered to anyone outside of my inner circle clients before because I wanted to say “thank you”, (and I still have to pay the bills LOL)… but I wanted to let you — my customers and readers — know that I am truly thankful and appreciative of you.