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| Photos are by Molly |
the other in gratitude
pressing them together to pray
Thanksgiving was a day to give thanks for so many of the extraordinary gifts which I am blessed with today. That list feels like it truly has no end...
Of course, life happens every day and that certainly includes on holidays. So plans can also need to be shifted or changed and there are surrenders into what is rather than what we had thought would be. For our extended family, that meant one group had to cancel because of lice and strep throat. And another couldn't meet because they all got Covid. And my husband and I missed who we didn't see. And we also went on to celebrate with who was able to gather together and, in addition, we enjoyed FaceTime calls with other family members. In the larger picture, we are all deeply blessed.
And gratitude has already long been my daily practice. It's amazing how things shift within me and in my life when I experience what is with gratitude and acceptance rather than what is lacking or "should" be different. So, for example, when I'm driving in a lot of traffic and everything is moving at a crawl, I surrender into what is and experience gratitude for this car that has enabled me to do my errands or visit with loved ones. And I'm grateful and just not going to sweat the small stuff. Not now, not now that I'm 73 and truly know the pain of the big stuff.
And not now after meeting Courtney when I was on my way to Trader Joes. She was standing on the corner as I got off the freeway with her little sign that read: "Anything is a Blessing". Gratefully, the traffic was stopped long enough for me to ask what her name was as I handed her a granola bar and a dollar bill. "Courtney," she said with a smile. And I responded smiling, "My name is Molly." Before our brief moments ended, Courtney and I both looked into each other's eyes and said Bless You to each other. As I drove away my tears began to well up as I thought of the travesty that there are any human beings living in such poverty and added onto the pain and suffering of untreated trauma. And I also thought — this could have been me...
So, no, I am no longer going to sweat the small stuff.
And as I move from holding the Courtneys of our world in my heart, I also bring awareness to holding and reflecting on the Native Americans who experience Thanksgiving as a National Day of Mourning... And my heart reflects on Palestinians... And this is yet another list that also goes on and on. There are just so many human beings and nonhumans who are greatly suffering. And it is this keenly heartfelt consciousness that fills me with both gratitude for all of the incredible gifts that I experience today and grief for all whose suffering and pain remains unrelenting and untouched with healing or hope.
Which is why the commitment to doing whatever I can to alleviate the suffering of my planetary sisters and brothers holds such a depth of heart and meaning for me. It is this intention that keeps me aware of the fact that holidays like Thanksgiving are not just a happy and loving time of feast and celebration and love with family and friends. There are many who are isolated and alone and hurting and hungry. And that matters. We all matter.
Which brings me to my own personal story around Thanksgiving and the holidays...
John
Thanksgiving of 1977 was the last time that I talked with my brother. It was on that phone call 47 years ago that John told me that he was going to hold out and be himself until our mother loved him for who he is rather than who she wants him to be. That pain of not being loved by our own mother has a depth that is indescribable. John and I were also only 26 years old, I had not yet done any healing work, and I had no idea how to respond. And I don't remember that I did. I numbed my powerlessness, pain, fear, and the impossibility that I could hug my twin with John being in Michigan and me living 2,000 miles away in Oregon.
I didn't call my brother that year on Christmas either. This is so sad. I didn't call John on Christmas because our mother was visiting me. And I felt so guilty that our mother was with me and not John — and especially knowing how starved we both were for her love. So I didn't call. And our mother didn't call her only son either. She and John had been fighting a lot. Consequently, and given that our father had died two years earlier, John spent his last Christmas home alone.
My first husband and I had moved from Michigan to the Pacific Northwest in the summer of '75. My last visit with my brother was on my first trip back to Michigan in May of 1977. John had checked himself into a psychiatric ward again, this time at Cottage Hospital in Grosse Pointe. I still remember the sound of his slippers on the floor as he made it to the table where my first husband I sat waiting to see him. And that was when John told me, "I know that I need to get away from Mother. And I know that I can't."
I knew that John was telling me goodbye. It was just over two months since our last phone call on Thanksgiving that my twin ended his life on January 30th, 1978.
I have spent many, many years healing and unburdening this deep trauma. And transforming it. Transforming all this tragedy and loss into my deep, deep passion for compassion and kindness and caring for us all. My twin brother's death has a lot to do with the gifts I am able to embody today.
And this does not mean that I don't still grieve. I do. Of course I do. We humans don't just get over and move on from our greatest losses. It is what we do with the little t and Big T traumas that we experience in our lifetimes that matters. And matters deeply.
It is not easy to be human. And this is especially true in our culture which is built on rugged individualism and other narratives and norms which lead us further from the wisdom of our hearts and the experience of deep valuing and kindness and connection with our human and nonhuman family.
This can be healed and transformed. We can awaken to greater truths and unburden ourselves and our planetary sisters and brothers of that which has long caused so much harm. My brother's suffering is but a symptom among countless others of our unhealthy culture, a culture which has for so very long needed the radical systemic changes that hold the potential to bring about the peaceful, just, and caring world that we all need, yearn for, and are worthy of.
Wouldn't it be such an extraordinary experience for there to be a universal day of Thanksgiving and celebration ― a celebration of an abundance that is shared beyond any nationalities or borders, races or religions, ethnicities or species? A National Day of Mourning could then become a day of the deepest gratitude, gratitude that is held right along side the grief for how lost we humans have been. Still, another world awaits. Starting within each and every one of us.
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Poems...
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Spiritual awakening is frequently described
as a journey to the top of a mountain.
We leave our attachments and our worldliness
behind and slowly make our way to the top.
At the peak we have transcended all pain.
The only problem with this metaphor is
that we leave all the others behind --
our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister,
our tormented animals and friends.
Their suffering continues, unrelieved
by our personal escape.
In the process of discovering our true nature,
the journey goes down, not up.
It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the
center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky.
Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures,
we move toward the turbulence and doubt.
We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it.
We move toward it however we can.
We explore the reality and unpredictability
of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away.
If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes,
we will let it be as it is. At our own pace,
without speed or aggression,
we move down and down and down.
With us move millions of others,
our companions in awakening from fear.
At the bottom we discover water,
the healing water of compassion.
Right down there in the thick of things,
we discover the love that will not die.
― Pema Chödrön
* * *
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
— Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
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