There's No Right Way To Spend This Day

With love and gratitude for you

Hello dear friends,

Today I woke with this profound sense of loneliness, sad at the fact that I was spending the day alone and with just a hint of pity thrown in the mix. Insomnia last night finally gave way to slumber, and waking later then usual compounded the sense that everything was terrible and meaningless.

A quick scroll through Facebook and Instagram with all the images of polished silverware, beautiful tablescapes, and cheerful greetings for gratitude of families converging and food cooking didn’t help.

For once I didn’t force myself to get up and deny the emotions that were rising. Allowing grief to wash over me until, unhindered by any attempt to avoid it, and aided by a steamy mug of coffee, the fog lifted, replaced with a deep sense of gratitude for waking in a warm bed with enough provisions to meet my needs for another day.

And lest I paint too gloomy of a picture, I chose to stay home today in favor of catching up on work and cleaning the house in anticipation of my kids and grandkids gathering on Saturday for a non-traditional celebration of turkey sandwiches and soup while decorating the Christmas tree.

Thanks to the digital record that comes by way of past posts shared on social media, and that which comes from my cloud service with the daily digest of images taken each year, I am able to look back and see how very non-traditional this traditional holiday of Thanksgiving has always been for me.

There have been years spent with multiple tables set, surrounded by dozens of family members and friends. Years that my daughter and her family hosted the gathering in their home. Of course that one memorable year of attempting to gather and feast from our separate spaces over ZOOM. There have been years with just a few others gathered around the table and years, long before these digital records of our existence were a thing, when I jokingly referred to the occasion as “Crystal’s feast for wayward family and friends” inviting anyone and everyone I knew who had no other place to go.

In all of these varied ways of spending the day, the constant has been food and the feeling of belonging, at least according to the visual record of the occasion.

Emotionally there have been years of grieving, knowing the dynamics of the family members were about to change. Years of struggling to put food on the table and years of plenty. Years of celebration for new grand babies. And the one year spent in an overwhelming crush of emotions for a life spared, after my youngest was the victim of a hit and run as she walked home from work the night before.

Not all of these years were spent on the official Thanksgiving holiday according to the calendar, being easier to coordinate schedules on the Friday after to avoid making offspring choose between families, or having to spend the day in a rush to get through two feasts.

As often as I share about the Intuitive Voice and the voice of the Art Critic when it comes to our time spent in the studio, the beauty of learning to tune in and listen to that place of knowing, is the impact it also has on my life outside of the studio. And the way that I can hear that critic voice for the distorter of truths that it is.

Today that critic voice started whispering in my ear the moment I became conscious, telling me that everyone else is surrounded by love and family and happiness and joyful feasting but me. Pointing out the evidence in images, and texts from friends, and the general sense of gloom hanging over my head. Experience in the studio has taught me to observe these messages without judgement; to acknowledge the fear underneath it with compassion, and to tune my ear for the voice of true knowing.

The Intuitive knowing inside of me understands there is no right way to spend this holiday, or any day for that matter, ordinary or special. The presence or absence of people around my table, the presence or absence of a table for that matter, is no way a reflection of my worth. The intuitive knowing understands that we have been set up to feel let down by the trap of comparison in our consumer driven society, where there is a right way and a wrong way to spend this day.

The intuitive knowing reminds me that belonging has nothing to do with other people. It tunes my eyes and heart to catch what is true.

Whether you are spending this day surrounded by family or alone, whether you are in grief or in celebration, whether this year is lean, or bountiful, or ordinary, I hope you know that none of it is evidence of your worth.

You belong. You are worthy. You matter.

With so much love and gratitude to you all, today and always.

Crystal Marie