Journal Entry 11.23.23

Today is Thanksgiving. Traditionally it is supposed to be a celebration, a gathering, an opportunity to celebrate gratitude, to give thanks in the presence of family. It became about football, and parades, and obligation, and resentment. Then it became again about gratitude in the Hallmark version, or about feasting, or about chosen family. For me it is a day of grieving. It is of a day once shared with my mother, that was taken from us. I can reclaim the day for myself, now, in new and different ways, but the days I spent in the kitchen with my mother, gently cooking, talking, visiting together as we cooked, was erased and replaced by people who did not care about the preciousness of that time for us.