Developing a Better You

Tag: thanksgiving (Page 1 of 2)

What Comes After Thanksgiving? A Helpful Holiday Perspective

What comes after Thanksgiving?

That’s the question recently posed by my dear friend and fellow writer Susan Rau Stocker in her wonderful blog The Many Faces of PTSD. Her insightful answer below gave me a much needed perspective now that the holiday season is in full swing. I hope it increases your enjoyment of the holidays as you take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

What comes after Thanksgiving?

I know: We’re tempted to say Christmas. But Christmas is a month away, and here we are at the end of November, “the gray month,” with more than we can possibly get done between now and December 25th. So, what comes after Thanksgiving? STRESS. WORRY. AGGRAVATION. SPENDING. COMPARING OURSELVES TO OTHERS. TV SHOWS AND ADS OF PERFECT COUPLES, PERFECT FAMILIES, PERFECT HOMES, PERFECT VACATIONS, PERFECT CHRISTMAS TREES AND . . . RELAXED PEOPLE.

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking more along the lines of the Grinch. This seems like a great time of year to take the dog and head off for the hills. “Come on, Max. We’ll be back in March. Maybe April.”

It’s not that I don’t love Christmas. I do love Christmas. I just don’t love what’s happened to it. Actually, it’s the same thing that has happened to weddings, funerals, birthdays, homes, cars, clothes and so much else. Everything seems to have out-grown itself. Almost everything is super-sized and as inflated as a balloon. Almost nothing has retained its meaning and simplicity.

How can we keep our heads about us in the midst of “holiday” rage? Road rage is only the beginning of the ways stress zaps our kindness to each other. Does it seem to you that most of life has become competitive instead of cooperative?

So, how do we keep it simple and real while those around us are in a race for the greatest and best, the snazziest and most elegant, the flashiest and finest? And do we need reasons to concentrate on simplicity? I know a pervasive, underlying reason: good health — mental, physical, psychological, and spiritual.

We need to disengage from the racing subway where we’re holding on to the straps for dear life. We need to sit on the mountaintop, if only in our imaginations, and stare out at the cosmos. We need to remember how little we are and how big the world is. When we look across the ocean or the mountains or the star-studded sky, why do we feel so much better? Because we regain our perspective. All is well. God’s in Her/His/Their Heaven. I have a deck of “Angel Cards” and one of them says: “”God keeps all the planets in the sky. Surely God is holding you, too.” I LOVE that thought. I guess if Jupiter and Mars are hanging in orbit, we humans can stay in our lanes, also.

What comes after Thanksgiving? A chance to re-position ourselves in a sane, safe, sweet, simple life we re-create, re-new, and rejoice in. Love, Susan

Susan Stocker is a blogger, novelist, and Marriage and Family Therapist with Masters degrees in Communication and Counseling. She served as a mental health ambassador to China in 1998 and has volunteered with the Alzheimer’s Association, American Cancer Society, and many other organizations. Her published works include Only Her Naked Courage (2013), Heart 1.5 (2013), The Many Faces of Anxiety (2013), The Many Faces of PTSD (2010), and Heart (1981), as well as her blog The Many Faces of PTSD (manyfacesofptsd.wordpress.com). She is on a lifelong journey toward Becoming Herself. You can contact her at sraustocker@yahoo.com.

The Life-Changing Power of a 3 Minute Thanksgiving Exercise

Can three minutes really change your life?

I understand the skepticism. We’ve all heard too many “get rich or skinny quick” sales pitches to believe such a claim easily. All I can say is one simple exercise has worked wonders for my emotional and mental health.

Every night before bed, I gaze out the window at the dark skyline and reflect on things I’m thankful for. Things that went well that day. Tasks I accomplished. Meaningful conversations I had. Beautiful things I saw. Something that made me laugh or smile. People I spent time with. Even on hard, crushing, frustrating days, I can be grateful for health, for family, for a roof over my head and food to eat. For the gift of sleep and the hope of a new day.

That’s it. It really is that simple. Those few minutes of intentional thankfulness foster a positive, healthy perspective and help me avoid a victim mentality.

I’m glad that in the U.S. we have an annual holiday centered on being thankful, but a habit of daily gratitude is far more impactful.

Celebrate well this Thanksgiving weekend. Enjoy rest, family, friends, and good food. Then carry a little bit of Thanksgiving with you everyday. Establish a three-minute thankfulness routine. If you do, your emotional and mental health will rise, and you’ll take another step toward Becoming Yourself.

Giving Thanks

My good friend and fellow blogger Susan Stocker recently wrote such a compelling perspective on Thanksgiving that I decided to share it. I hope her words expand your view of the holiday and helps you take another step toward Becoming Yourself (you can subscribe to Susan’s wonderful blog here).

Can you believe we are fortunate enough to live in a country which sets aside a special day for THANKSGIVING??? Maybe that is the first thing for which we might be thankful! Of the 195 countries on this earth, only 17 have a celebrated Thanksgiving.

In 1621, fifty-three Pilgrims entertained ninety indigenous people who had helped them adapt to a new world, plant crops, learn to fish for strange and different fish, grind meal, make unusual crops eatable, build dwellings, hunt wildlife and, put simply, survive. For three days this assembly celebrated, feasted and learned from each other although everything about them was different, from language to customs to which fork to use for which course — just kidding about the forks! 

Next year our Thanksgiving will be the four hundredth such celebration. 

We might suppose this holiday has lasted because it’s built around food and eating ourselves into a coma. (Actually, I think that might be a modern addition to the original intent.) We might also assume that the giving of thanks was to God. That does not seem to be strictly true, either. These Pilgrims were English separatists who were breaking away from the church. Nonetheless, while they were surely thanking God, they also felt a need to thank the native peoples who had helped them live long enough for a celebration.

I think they were giving thanks to the American Indians who, instead of killing them, had welcomed these strange foreigners although earlier groups of Pilgrims, who had returned to Europe, had apparently kidnapped some of the “Indians” and taken them along back to England as slaves. Despite that, the inhabitants of the land — Native Americans never believed in such a concept as “owning” land — shared not only the land but their knowledge of how to live in harmony with the land.

That’s my understanding of how this whole gratitude day got started — gratuitously. The Native peoples asked nothing in return. They welcomed the refugees. “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,” was the invitation offered to the Pilgrims. We’ll help you find a home here. We’ll show you how to acclimate. “Mi casa y su casa.” My house is your house; my home is your home. “This land is your land, this land is my land.”

My friends… what do you think? How have we done four hundred years later in retaining the spirit of the celebration?

Maybe there’s a real opportunity for us this year when we are encouraged not to gather in the same way with the same crowd of people with the same limp phrases on our lips. Clearly, we need to sit out a year or a century and see if we can realign ourselves with the original meaning of a day of giving thanks. Maybe we can figure out a way to share with those who are different, diverse, disadvantaged, and disheartened. What a chance to reassess and re-design. What a possibility. 

I can’t help but believe nothing would please that God of ours more. I know that many of us, as parents ourselves, not THE parent that God is, just A parent, are pleased more than in any other way by watching our children live in harmony, happiness, gratitude toward each other and thankfulness with and for each other. Here are my three posing for a picture for their (thankful) mother.

Love, Susan

Susan Stocker is a blogger, novelist, and Marriage and Family Therapist with Masters degrees in Communication and Counseling. She served as a mental health ambassador to China in 1998 and has volunteered with the Alzheimer’s Association, American Cancer Society, and many other organizations. Her published works include Only Her Naked Courage (2013), Heart 1.5 (2013), The Many Faces of Anxiety (2013), The Many Faces of PTSD (2010), and Heart (1981), as well as her blog The Many Faces of PTSD (manyfacesofptsd.wordpress.com). She is on a lifelong journey toward Becoming Herself. You can contact her at sraustocker@yahoo.com.

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