Thrive As You

In the last decade or so, Thanksgiving has gone from celebrating the first meal shared between the Native  Americans and the pilgrims and  it has become more about gratitude, and celebrating what we are thankful for.   It has gone from Thanksgiving to Thanks+Giving, the act of giving thanks.   We see it all over social media with hashtags like #thankful, #grateful, #30daysofthanks, and so on.  People are taking time to count their blessings and share their gratitude with others.  I love this. Traditionally, Thanksgiving, the celebration of that "big day," is centered around a humongous meal that typically involves more food than any one family can eat.  This is what we remember.  This is what our memories are made of.  We reminisce about family crammed into a house too small to contain all of the visitors, some people sitting at card tables, some on the sofa watching football...traditionally women in the kitchen, football or parades on...

It's that time of year again, I can feel it brewing. That time when people see the month of November right around the corner and are preparing their facebook pages for an onslaught of gratitude.  For the entire month of November, the time of year that graciously hosts the holiday of thanks, we see lists and "challenges" and daily reminders.  Every social media outlet will be barraged with thanks.  Instagram will do their photo challenge, facebook will be loaded with "Day 7 of things I'm grateful for...." ad nauseum.   Our feeds will be full of thanks. And that makes me so happy. Kind of. This has been a rough year for me,  a rough 3 years in fact.  And what I've learned, what I KNOW is that the only way I have survived it, and in fact THRIVED it, is through the practice of gratitude.  Now hold up.   Before we start talking about "gratitude practice" I want to talk about that phrase.  It's kind of "hip" right ...