Grateful, Unsettled, and Cherishing

As we ease on into the (US) Thanksgiving weekend, I am grateful for many things, unsettled by others, and cherishing one or two--the true gems around which my life revolves.

Grateful: for a warm home, loving friends and family, an extraordinary year, new connections with like-minded souls, progress and forward movement in areas both personal, as well as professional.

Unsettled: Thanksgiving is not one of my favourite holidays. It is not as big a deal in Canada as it is here, in the US. And this big deal -- in the schools, in particular, is a real problem for me. I struggle to infuse what my girls learn at school, with a more balanced perspective (see this post for an example). As my girls come home with feather headdresses and songs about tepees and how the Indians and Pilgrims were friends, I wish desperately that they were old enough to read this -- one of my favourite articles about Thanksgiving from a Native American perspective. Instead, I do my best to distill the information and translate it into a five-year-old and eight-year-old vocabulary.

Cherishing: the health of my children and life partner, and the opportunity to wake up every morning and try again to help shape this world into something closer to what it can be.

I wish you all a safe, relaxing, hope-filled holiday weekend.