Thanksgiving Day is a day of giving thanks for the abundance of the harvest and for celebrating the year about to pass. I would venture to add, to also give thanks for those who have helped me stand strong.
The first Canadian Thanksgiving was celebrated in Newfoundland in 1538, 40 years before the American version. Early settlers had a lot to be thankful for just to survive in the wild new frontier. It took unique relationships with others to survive and thrive.
The idea of performing a ceremony over food, which is really what Thanksgiving is, is borrowed from First Nations feasts and harvest festivals, where the importance of abundance in life also meant survival. Indigenous peoples grew the holy grail of nutrition, an ingenious formula of squash, corn and beans, also known as the Three Sisters, to provide complete nutrition. Throw a dead fish under the Three Sisters and you’ve got natural fertilizer! Our First Nations people shared this knowledge readily with European newcomers, essentially assuring their survival.
The collaboration of Indigenous peoples with new North Americans, in the spirit of service, makes me think of the many people for whom I am grateful. Almost no one from the days of Robert Kennedy Publishing has remained in my circle. Like the early settlers, I had to start all over again, making new relationships, learning new skills, tossing the irrelevant, creating new and unique partnerships and walking the lonely road of re-invention. It was a brave new frontier for me.
The lessons have been taxing and yet I know I have learned much and grown measurably stronger and wiser from the good people who are now among my greatest teachers. Like the Three Sisters, I am not the result of my efforts alone but of many who have stood beside me over the years, particularly these challenging past several years. They have infused me with new energy.
Through these good people I have learned to forgive, a practice that loosened my angry heart enough to let others in. I have learned to let go of the past, because, to borrow a phrase from one of my mentors, “the past is perfect.” I have also learned to trust again, a most difficult task as I often closed myself against others in fear. I have learned to be a friend rather than a giver only. I continue the learning today and hopefully always.
I am flinging away the old and ushering in new abundance by writing what I like to call my Victory Story. Believe me when I say, I am overjoyed to be writing again. I haven’t known how to tell my story but now, let me tell you, it’s on! I look forward to each creative session and can hardly stop myself from my work.
This Thanksgiving, I will be grateful for the meal my family and I will share. I will set a beautiful table, create delicious Eat Clean™ foods to nourish body and soul. I will hold hands with loved ones and friends and look out upon a table where love collides in joyous bounty. How grateful I am for the blessings of life, for I am here and I am drinking it all in. Thank you. Thank you.
Wishing you and yours a Joyous and Bountiful Thanksgiving.
Warmly,
Tosca Reno
PS. Share your thankfulness below. What is your greatest gratitude this year?
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