A delayed return to gratitude this Thanksgiving
A few weeks before Thanksgiving this year, I decided to reject gratitude. At first, it felt extreme. But only about as extreme as being told that the only narrative about my adoption should be one filled with gratitude, destiny, and love.
Rejecting gratitude felt like a way to turn my attention to other feelings that have been missing around my experience as an adoptee. To *finally*, after many years, turn my attention to the crushing waves of despair, loss, and grief that have always existed, but have been frequently diminished or suppressed. To finally understand that my struggles with being optimistic, having faith, and love, have a high correlation with experiences that are beyond my conscious and before I was conscious.
This rejection, or pause, on gratitude coincided nicely with National Adoption Adoptee Awareness Month (NAAM). 2023 was the first year I learned of NAAM, which was originally created to promote (the complex and problematic system of) adoption in the US. In recent years, adoptees — or as some of my peers would say, those affected by the family policing system — have been reclaiming this month to center the adoptee experience.
As a result, I found myself stumbling into many warm, radical, and beautiful community gatherings. I didn’t explicitly name it while I was in November (because of my gratitude pause) but looking back on it all, I am sincerely grateful for how I was supported and held this month.
I’m especially grateful for:
- The Adoptee Empowerment Circle
- A cool book club
- Reading several memoirs and books written by adoptees
- Being able to revisit my adoption case
- Talking and connecting with adoptees
- Revisiting my birth search
- My friend who helped me translate some documents
- My friends at the monastery
- My body for the strength, resilience, and courage to meet the darkness within
In a similar spirit, I’m also grateful for how Thanksgiving unfolded this year. I spent time with three very different parts of my family and was able to explore ‘family’ from several different angles. I was a little nervous about being bombarded by gratitude narratives, but I wasn’t. I tried to hold space for questions and not rush to conclusions… but naturally I did. What was the significance of it all???
It didn’t make satisfying sense until December… until I realized that the unifying thread across every experience this Thanksgiving was… jook.
A simple soup made of water, rice, leftover meat, and spices. For some reason, my brain has always thought of it as “poor man’s soup.”
Someone made jook at every gathering, and even though I know it’s a common dish for my family, it surprised me. Or, maybe I was surprised by how surprised I was.
I loved slurping every version of it this Thanksgiving. My aunt’s jook was super fatty and delicious. My other aunt’s jook was thicker and meatier. My mom’s jook was light and healthy.
Jook seemed to tie all of these disparate experiences together. And it also confirmed that if I have to eat turkey for Thanksgiving, I would prefer it be in jook.
Once I realized that I realized that it was safe to feel gratitude for a soup, I realized that it might be safe to feel gratitude again. It started as a silly joke, but I’ve realized that jook was truly the catalyst that broke my gratitude hiatus.
So, maybe the moral of this story is to start small. When it feels impossible, start really small. Start with the seemingly insignificant and stay there. Enjoy the jook as jook. It doesn’t have to be more or less than that. Meet yourself where you’re at.
And then slowly, in your own time, remember that gratitude will not diminish or dilute the darkness you fear might disappear if you allow gratitude to re-enter your life. Like the fat and vegetables that swim around in your soup, many things can coexist in one bowl at once.
Watch how you can feel anger, grief, sadness, frustration, and… gratitude. It’s all there.
Your belly is warm. Your arteries may be more clogged. It’s all part of the experience of experiencing it all.
You are OK.