Thanksgiving 2023

 I've been caught up in a whirlwind of expression. I questioned if I had driven myself to complete exhaustion when I found myself bed ridden on Sunday. I was sick. The illness reminiscent from travels down bitter and emotional roads of difficult decades prior. Then the creeping sensation of complete aloneness engulfed me. I didn't get out of bed until that Tuesday. I've cried a great deal and lamented most of Wednesday. Today I awoke to Thanksgiving Day.

I have been scared I was falling to far down, where I would struggle too hard to get back up. All alone, everyone in my family was pretty much dead. And I walked away from remaining family. I remembered the PDF sent to me over a decade ago about one of my native ancestors. I know it is important, but I haven't had the strength to explore my deep past. I am still working on "generational trauma." We have terms and markers now that helps us get on the same page. If our generations progress beyond cataclysmic cycles, this time will be viewed as The Great Shift.

Our American celebration of Thanksgiving has somewhat risen and fallen within my own lifetime. It was the beginning of the guilting. We were being conditioned for "Home for the Holidays" while trying to escape dysfunctional families. We believed at the time we were alone in our pain inflicted from family. We gathered under the internet and began to share our experiences. In my lifetime we have advanced quicker than the generations before, that we were currently aware of. Daily discoveries push us deeper into knowledge and more questioning. In five decades on this planet, I have gone from being alone, to completely connected, then connected and alone. 

My home is a mess. I need to clean, desperately. I need to get grounded and balanced, or I am going to fall hard. And I don't want that. What does that mean? That means I am not giving up. At this crossroads right here, I don't want to take a road that leads to dissatisfaction. My surroundings being in shambles is dissatisfactory to me. Not eating properly or being optima with my time and energy is not satisfying for me. I started my mental checklist of grounding. Medications, check. Then anxiety arose, I have to find a new Medicine man/woman/entity. What is the optimal thing to do here? 

I started cleaning off my desk and creating space to think. I pulled out my desk calendars and seeing the year 2023 on them actually made my stomach drop. This time since Covid, I would not want to relive. Hard lessons learned and more pain than I could have ever imagined. All the worst has, I was alone in bed on Thanksgiving morning. I realized something deep within me in that moment that shook me.  This was Ancestral Trauma. 

I fully believe that the Earth was completely upheaved 12,000 years ago. The proof of global cataclysms during the Younger Dryas is petrifying. To fully grasp that most of everything on this planet was greatly traumatized in a very short time, all at once, is painful. "The Great Flood"was primarily considered a biblical deluge myth. It is strange to think about now. Joseph Campbell was blazing myth trails in the 80s as I was being schooled in public education, as well as esoteric arts. Every culture has a flood myth, why? Because a great flood happened. So? So ... Let's think about this now, in a new way.

We don't know exactly what created the onslaught of global disasters during the Younger Dryas, but they happened. It must of been absolutely horrifying. Those that survived, must have been scarred. The kind of deep scarring we are finding that is embedded in our DNA now. The pain of loosing everything you have even known, and have nothing to rebuild with. That deep aloneness, we all carry, because those were are ancestors, the survivors. We are them. We hold life sacred, because it is fleeting. And like a thief in the night, with it, it could all disappear. I deeply connect with that ancestor within me, that was a witness to the change. It revealed ancient memories of aloneness, deep sorrow, but also gratitude.

Gratitude. This is at the heart of what we want a Thanks Giving to be about. A gratitude for the bounty we are receiving now. Generations of suffering before us, our struggle to push forward. Here I am, a descendant of that earth altering event, with the ability to do anything I want. I recognize that it is in my heart and want to continue forward, at all costs. I make a choice for me and everything around me, every time I make a choice. Deep within me are choices I deem at "right" for me. That is the honesty and authenticity I see within myself is now. I see how my choices affected those around me, as well as my trajectory. I would have made different choices had I been truer to myself. How do I know? Because in my memory they were a crossroads, a choice, a journey I chose, against my instincts. If I were truthful to myself, yet that had been a life quest. Remember the yellow ducky?

When I think about where I am physically now on the planet, in comparison to my ancestors, I am in complete gratitude. It is that deep connected feeling I have that reaches out to all around me. What a gift I truly have, to experience this existence. That is my motivation, to make the most of every moment I have left in this space. I don't want to suffer, so I am going to take my meds, my vitamins, print my schedules for time management, and rebalance. I'm ready to move forward in resolve and gratitude. This is how I want to spend this "holiday."