Happy non-colonial-Thanksgiving, a day in which our family feasts and takes time to celebrate being alive and to reflect on the many reasons we have to be grateful. Things are just…rough. Another, very soon day, I will share HOW EXACTLY HOW ROUGH. But today is the day I give thanks, and the harder things are, the more I have to be thankful for.
Thank you to my sister. She is a fucking saint. She is the only one who feels comfortable with X3 in any state, and will just TRY. She takes our kids one evening a week, EVERY FUCKING WEEK, without which tiny moment of break I do not know how we would have survived. Schools are closed, I don’t go to my office, our therapy is virtual, our doctors are virtual, we are ordering most groceries, but we are NOT giving her up, because without her I honestly worry we might have to check the entire family into in-patient care (hahahah, just kidding, there are no beds in in-patient care!) She is a gift I can never repay, and she gives SO SO MUCH. We are so lucky to have her, my kids are so lucky to have her, the world is so lucky to have her. She bought me this adorable Black Santa with a little X2 and little X3, and they bring me joy every time I walk past them.
I am so grateful for Posse and Posse+. You know who you are, because you are the women I can and do text and message day and night 24 hours a day, and you are FUCKING THERE. They hear me screaming the same message over and over into the void of hopelessness, and they say “we are still listening, tell me again”. My heart is held so closely and so cared for. I miss them like hell, and I love them with my whole being.
I am grateful for changing gender and sexual norms, which have changed SO MUCH just in the last decade. I love teaching my kids that gender is a spectrum, and that some people are not boys or girls, and that anything and everything is ok. It is SO DIFFERENT than when I grew up and so different even than I felt about life and the world a decade ago. It gives me hope for the future.
I am thankful for my children, despite the intense difficulties that we are currently living, because they bring joy and kindness and love into my life. I did not believe I could be a safe and loving mother, and while I still struggle, overall, I am so glad that I made this journey, and grateful for the chance to be their mother.
In a silly but so real situation, I am grateful my stomach has been tolerating refried beans, and that X3 has at the same time decided she ALSO tolerates refried beans! You have no idea how much I have missed bean and cheese burritos or how much simple joy this brings back into my life!
I am so grateful to have an amazing cabin so that even in the isolation of quarantine we have a way to do something, anything, DIFFERENT. I’m grateful for the quiet woods that give my children space to RUN and YELL and EXPLORE and be BORED because their parents won’t let them inside for at least 20 minutes, and to figure out something to do with themselves already! I am grateful to sit in front of the fire and read and give my brain a chance to rest.
I am grateful for my colleagues, who have continued to believe in me and recognize and reward how hard I work and how much I want to succeed. And who have listened and understood when I explain why I constantly fall short and have not only not punished me for complete fuck-show of the last year, but have trusted me to strive for excellence and this week voted me to be a full partner!
I am beyond grateful for my partner, and for where we are in our relationship. We are neither of us easy or easy-going people, and we have worked FUCKING HARD for our life together, which is a life that we wake up and choose together each day. We are now doing the hardest thing either of us has ever chosen, and I am proud of how we are doing it together. I am so grateful my partner is the primary caregiver, a role I have never desired and which is literally its own circle of hell this year. I am grateful that my children will grow up with a male role model that cleans, grocery shops, and cooks; I hope that if they choose male partners when they grow up they will expect that equality in their partnership. I am proud and grateful for the intense emotional work he has done over the last year in realizing more and more the emotional toll being a minority in the United States takes, as he strives to be an aware and strong cross-racial father to two Black children. I am grateful in particular for the moments my partner and I are able to find strength in each other and to choose to keep moving forward together each day.