The Days After Thanksgiving: Thankful Reflections

Joanna Poppink, day after Thanksgiving in Hotel Bel Air gardens. Photo by Delilah Hirshland

After the joy, stress, sorrow and clean up is passed you may feel motivated to move ahead toward the upcoming holidays with a pang. Thanksgiving comes and goes so quickly. What was all that activity and emotion about?

Your Thanksgiving may have involved:

  • Preparing a feast for many
  • Being a guest
  • Shopping and cooking
  • Organizing a pot luck

Perhaps you needed to make arrangements for special diets including different health, political and religious diversities.

  • But maybe you were alone, lonely and feeling isolated.
  • Perhaps money is an issue this year and you couldn’t afford a Thanksgiving dinner.
  • Maybe you went to a community feed at a civic center.
  • You may have been with people you like and love.
  • You may have been with people who stifle their animosity or pain to put on a holiday face.

Whatever your experience was it’s now days later. Something powerful happened whether you can name it or not.

Now, in the privacy of your own heart and mind, is a time when you can reflect. No rules burden you about how you behave or what you say. This is your time. What are you really thankful for?

I invite you to say these thanks aloud, not as affirmations, but as explorations. See what touches your heart. See if a thank you resides within you that perhaps you forgot or neglected or maybe never acknowledged.

I’m thankful for:

1. Feeling my lungs as I breathe in and out..
2. For new beginnings that are possible for me with every breath and every day.
3. For my ability to tolerate what life presents.
4. For being able to open my heart to others, perhaps slowly and even reluctantly, but there it is.
5. For pain that expands my empathy for others.
6. For healing and nourishing sleep when I am tired.
7. For my ability to see and taste and touch and hear and move even if some of those abilities are memories.
8. For the world around me with all the living beings it contains.
9. For second chances.
10. For being able to view everything anew, to learn and offer what I can, even when I’m not quite ready to offer anything yet.
11. For my ability to heal and to forgive.
12. For my ability to feel wonder and see beauty in unexpected places.

And most of all, I’m thankful for being a part of everything.

Discovering your true thankfulness helps you discover your true self. You become more solid in this life when you know the true values that guide you.

To explore and discover your strength and values, read Healing Your Hungry Heart.

Continue reading here: Gratitude and Eating Disorders

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