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Thanksgiving Falls on Every Day of My Calendar
I got up early, watched the sunrise with coffee and permakitten, drove over to Queens in Minerva, my trusty blue hatchback, and took a long hike through Forest Park, listening to the birds and squirrels and wind and leaves, meditating by the pond as the whippoorwills and a potbellied homo sapien practiced their scales. On the way home I stopped off at Trader Joe’s to fetch things I’ll want to eat on the Thursday formerly known to me as Thanksgiving, and joked with cashiers whom I’ve come to know and adore. It was a simple morning, but so meaningful and joyful because it was entirely on my terms.
Only very very recently could a woman could live by herself, drive a car she bought herself with money kept in a bank account with only her name on it. Even more miraculous: I finance my existence with work I feel called to do that once upon a time would’ve got me burned at the stake.
Given our country’s history of genocide and colonization–and given my complicated personal relationship to the Thanksgiving holiday–I’ve come to treat the last Thursday of November as a quiet and solitary day of reflection. I go for a long city walk, I say hi to the river, I slow-roast local vegetables, I pay my respects to this land that has seen so much harm since Europeans’ arrival. And then I watch really raggedy, emotionally complicated films like Lumet’s The Morning After, 
in which Jane Fonda plays a drunken former actress framed for murder on Thanksgiving Weekend.
It’s been a year since I injured my back so badly I was immobilized; two years since I was so broke I was afraid I would lose my home. Now, through the support of friends, healers, and my own adjustments, I can stand on my two feet again. I’m profoundly grateful I can freely move through this world’s extraordinary-ordinariness on my own terms. There is always so much beauty and love to be honored
Every day of the week, I’m so grateful to be grateful.
Just a Very Virgo Season Blurt
You know what’s not discussed enough? Women who don’t demand fair wages because they live off their partners or inherited wealth. It is a very problematic issue through a feminist lens, yet often not broached because there are so many taboos around talking about money and class, and because self-esteem is so tied to salary.
Women who work for less than they should set a precedent–perpetuate one, really–that makes it a lot harder for the rest of us who demand equal pay. They reinforce the assumption that women’s work need not be taken seriously. And they disrespect all the women who fought long and hard for the Equal Pay Act.
This is not just a political issue. I see this as a spiritual issue, because energy that is not adequately replenished disrupts the order of everything. Work must be honored–and in a capitalist society, adequate financial compensation is an essential expression of that honor.
It’s amazing this issue still surfaces so frequently. It is an example of something else that doesn’t get discussed enough: toxic femininity.*
*Dudes, I am no more interested in you taking up this phrase than I am accepting of how you misapply “Karen” as an all-purpose term to write off women. Redirect that impulse into developing your divine masculinity.