A HOPEful Thanksgiving [positiveexperience.org/category/blog]

These seem like nice tips and seem well in the spirit of positive experience building. That said, the article also felt a bit exclusionary or invalidating (likely not intentional) to those who don't have positive holiday associations.

A lot of my clients and peers have few to no friends or relationships they're thankful for.

They don't have past family or a culture to connect to. They don't have access to accessible community events (for examples, a lot of people with sensory issues would do poorly at a parade).

They constantly get told to do self-care and self-growth despite having done introspection for years and understand that that's not the failure point for them.

I'm possibly being a big downer here, and I do think these tips are likely useful to great for the right target audience. I do wish we could also make a bit more room for validating those for whom the holidays are awful and dreadful.

A sizable portion of individuals I know skip this altogether and just try to "get through" the day. And many families feel pressured and shamed with how little they can do in the way of the holiday social pressure is pushing on them to deliver.

That is not meant to say holidays are universally god or bad things. As your blog notes - there a number of individuals for whom this is one of the best and most enjoyable times of the year.

It is to say, it's a complex topic that the trauma-informed community is slowly doing a bit better at overall, and it's a hard one to work through. Excited for more discussion over the next month and a half on how to be more accommodating to the groups and perspectives mentioned above, while also accommodating those for whom this blog post works well for.

@Frank Sterle Jr. posted:

GRACE

Pass me the holiday turkey, peas
and the delicious stuffing flanked
by buttered potatoes with gravy
since I’ve said grace with plenty ease
for the good food received I’ve thanked
my Maker who’s found me worthy.
It seems that unlike the many of those
in the unlucky Third World nation
I’ve been found by God deserving
to not have to endure the awful woes
and the stomach wrenching starvation
suffered by them with no dinner serving.
So hand me the succulent corn
the cranberry sauce, fresh baked bread
since for my grub I’ve praised the Lord
yet I need not hear about those born
whose meal I’ve been granted instead
as they receive naught of the grand hoard.

I, a believer in Christ’s unmistakable miracles, personally would be quite willing to consistently say grace every day of every year if everyone on Earth—and not just a minority of the planet’s populace—had enough clean, safe drinking water and nutritional food to maintain a normal, healthy daily life; and I’d be pray-fully ‘thankful’ if every couple’s child would survive his or her serious illness rather than just a small portion of such sick children.

Furthermore, what makes so many of us believe that collective humanity should be able to enjoy the pleasures of free will, but cry out for and expect divine mercy and rescue when our free will ruins our figurative good day—i.e. that we should have our cake and eat it, too?

Obviously, it’s not desirable to challenge one of humanity’s greatest institutions on record—i.e. praying and saying grace to an omnipotent/omniscient entity—a pathetic fact quite evident by the total absence of this missive in virtually every newspaper on Earth.

Lastly, is it only me, or is there some truly unfortunate, bitter irony in holding faith and hope in prayer—when unanswered prayer results in an increase in skeptical atheism and/or agnosticism?

Thus, the preceding poem was penned with sincere consideration for the countless hungry souls worldwide for whom there’s nothing to be thankful on Thanksgiving Day—nor any other day of the year, for that matter—COVID-19 crisis or not.

GRACE

Pass me the holiday turkey, peas
and the delicious stuffing flanked
by buttered potatoes with gravy
since I’ve said grace with plenty ease
for the good food received I’ve thanked
my Maker who’s found me worthy.
It seems that unlike the many of those
in the unlucky Third World nation
I’ve been found by God deserving
to not have to endure the awful woes
and the stomach wrenching starvation
suffered by them with no dinner serving.
So hand me the succulent corn
the cranberry sauce, fresh baked bread
since for my grub I’ve praised the Lord
yet I need not hear about those born
whose meal I’ve been granted instead
as they receive naught of the grand hoard.