This Thanksgiving, I’m quietly asking…with my often hyper-sensitive heart on my sleeve…that we make space to sit together with the whole truth of the day we’re about to celebrate.
We cannot, and we should not, keep whitewashing our history with a single story of “the peaceful dinner,” as if one shared meal could eclipse centuries of genocide, broken treaties, displacement, indoctrination, and grief.
We don’t need guilt or shame to tell the truth, yet only the truth will set us free: free to love, to heal, to grow. We need the courage to hold precious both the beauty of gathering with the people we love…and the pain carried by those who survived what we tend to pretend never happened.
Honoring the truth doesn’t take anything away from our gratitude. It will deepen it if we let it. It stretches our humanity. It invites us to celebrate in a way that is grounded, aware, and real. In my experience, it becomes much more special, more memorable, more important…in this case, more than turkey, football, and an upset stomach from this gluttonous American tradition.
So this Thanksgiving, let us pause, please.
Let us make room at our tables…not with performative gestures, but with sincere remembrance.
Let us speak aloud what was done, what was lost, and what still deserves justice.
Let us teach our children that gratitude means nothing if it cannot coexist with truth.
We owe it to ourselves, to the people whose land we are on, and to the generations who will follow us, to hold this holiday high, but with integrity…not as a myth, but as a moment of reflection, responsibility, and renewed commitment to compassion and perhaps a renewed commitment to unity.
May we gather in thanksgiving, not for a sanitized past, but for the chance to do better with the future we still hold in our hands.
Harvesting Insights 