I can safely say that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is a wonderful opportunity to get together with family and loved ones with out the pressure of gifts and pretense. It is a day that is set aside to look around and say "I love you and I love that you are a part of my life". I clearly have been lucky through out the years to have great Thanksgivings despite illness, loss and raw turkey. 
This year my Thanksgiving was filled with thoughts of what I am really thankful for. I find that while I try to be a good wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend I am not very good at telling people how important they are to me. I have the "thank you" down pat but most of the time the real heart felt expressions of my gratitude seem to get stuck somewhere between cheesy and sappy. Both of which are uncomfortable. How do you say to a person that they are so important in your life with out breaching the comfort zone. I feel that I am important to many people that I care for yet they rarely make me uncomfortable with the knowledge. How do they slip it under the wire? Do I just know because I know? Did I miss a class in manners or do they know how important they are to me with out it being spelled out? I do fear at times that I am leaving important things unsaid and do try to fit them in at better times but I would be really upset to find that people in my life aren't sure about their importance to me. I really must have missed a manners class.
That is a really good thing about Thanksgiving. It makes me try harder to make sure that I treat who and what I am thankful for with a caring hand. I know that the holiday is representative of bigger things but I think that making it personal has to be a good thing. I am not only thankful but grateful for so many things in my life. My loving husband. My beautiful children. My Mom and sister who love me no matter what. My bigger family including a Grandma and Papa that love my children as if they were their actual grand babies. My friends that help me keep my head above water. All of Ben's teachers and therapists that have loved him through the years. All of our doctors that have brought us through so much. The opportunity to stay at home and care for my children. Living. Loving. Laughing. Too many things to think about let alone name. Each one of these reasons to be thankful is so very important that the little things seem, well, just little.
This year my Thanksgiving was filled with thoughts of what I am really thankful for. I find that while I try to be a good wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend I am not very good at telling people how important they are to me. I have the "thank you" down pat but most of the time the real heart felt expressions of my gratitude seem to get stuck somewhere between cheesy and sappy. Both of which are uncomfortable. How do you say to a person that they are so important in your life with out breaching the comfort zone. I feel that I am important to many people that I care for yet they rarely make me uncomfortable with the knowledge. How do they slip it under the wire? Do I just know because I know? Did I miss a class in manners or do they know how important they are to me with out it being spelled out? I do fear at times that I am leaving important things unsaid and do try to fit them in at better times but I would be really upset to find that people in my life aren't sure about their importance to me. I really must have missed a manners class.
That is a really good thing about Thanksgiving. It makes me try harder to make sure that I treat who and what I am thankful for with a caring hand. I know that the holiday is representative of bigger things but I think that making it personal has to be a good thing. I am not only thankful but grateful for so many things in my life. My loving husband. My beautiful children. My Mom and sister who love me no matter what. My bigger family including a Grandma and Papa that love my children as if they were their actual grand babies. My friends that help me keep my head above water. All of Ben's teachers and therapists that have loved him through the years. All of our doctors that have brought us through so much. The opportunity to stay at home and care for my children. Living. Loving. Laughing. Too many things to think about let alone name. Each one of these reasons to be thankful is so very important that the little things seem, well, just little.
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