Reasons to be thankful

Happy Thanksgiving my fellow heretics!

Happy Thanksgiving my fellow heretics! 🥳

Of course, I am in the UK where Thanksgiving is just the last Thursday of November. No turkey feasts or family feuds form the part of the cultural lore here. Soon it will be December, and the whole country will go into Christmas jumper and booze-drenched Christmas party overdrive, without the added fuss of another holiday on the front end.

So I spend today as I spend most days, walking my dogs, writing and doing life/mom admin. I was driving my son to school this morning when I had the idea to take part in the spirit of the holiday, if not the feasting, and share with you a few things that I am immensely thankful for this year. (In no particular order.)

I am thankful for my home and the two people I share it with, two funny and caring males who love me and take care of me as I take care of them: with daily interactions that give my life meaning and purpose and joy. 

I am thankful for my two ridiculous dogs who make me laugh every day with their doggy antics, like defending me from rolls of cling film (Saran wrap to you Americans) and the postman. 

I am thankful for my American family, who, while I see and speak with them rarely nowadays, shaped me and moulded me into the woman I am: seven ball-busting women (that’s my mother plus her six sisters), generous uncles and many hilarious and talented cousins. I am thankful for them all, even the ones who think I’m a crazy right-winger.

I am thankful for my old friends back in the States and elsewhere, those who have stuck by me and encouraged me despite the many slings and arrows of life. And that includes any and all political differences we might have, because they know those things don’t matter so much in the final analysis. Peter, Tess, Katherine, Miranda, Evan, Jason, Eric, Campbell, Helen, Michele — relationships that go back decades, the memories of which I find myself cherishing more and more these days.

I am thankful for my new friends, made this year as I dipped my toe in the shark-infested water of public opinion. Our shared experience of dissent is an almost daily comfort, even if we don’t talk all the time. Jodi, Ashley, Sienna, Nancy, Walter, Maria, Dearbhla — and many others that I have yet to actually speak to — I see your posts and your comments and they enlighten, inform and entertain me. 

I am thankful for my haters — who are fortunately few and far between but who nonetheless show me by their actions just how much pain our crazy socio-political climate has caused, which in turn reminds me of why it is important to keep speaking up.

I am thankful for a wide array of public figures who have created content I found particularly important or helpful—  in explaining events, reporting out the facts, and making fun of the self-important. Figures on the left (Jimmy Dore, Glenn Greenwald, Thaddeus Russell, Catherine Liu) and the right (Megan Kelly, Steve Bannon) and the politically indeterminate (Doug Beattie, James Lindsay, Joe Rogan.) Our messed-up discourse has made it verboten to admit to this, as the very mention of certain names casts a magical spell over the bewitched. But that is exactly why it’s important to keep saying them.

I am thankful for the beauty of nature that surrounds me and sustains me.

I am thankful for each of you, subscribers, who seem willing to entertain my notions.

And finally, I am thankful for my own inner compass that has guided me thus far in life. Thanks to it, my aim is true.