My 2020 Thanksgiving Reflections

We just purchased The Mourning Road to Thanksgiving and look forward to this being one of our next family book reads. It was a no-brainer-purchase after listening to a conversation between Larry Spotted Crow Mann and Senator Jo Comerford of Massachusetts on Rethinking Thanksgiving. I do not know the best way to catch the attention of the information-overloaded and media-saturated minds of those that might land here, but I'd like to try! If the images of Thanksgiving that you were fed as a child mirror mine in any way (e.g. putting on plays of Pilgrims and Indians feasting together), please give a 1/2 hour of your time this Thanksgiving week to listen deeply to this conversation! 

What follows here is an attempt to give a window into my personal process of late - my attempt to keep opening myself to continued learning and growth with a big dose of humility and the need for a lot of patience with myself in the process. It's been messy, friends! And you may be curious about my choice to put this reflection in this space, that I have labeled many times our "family scrapbook." It's a deliberate choice to name this as a big part of our family's path these days, not just my own personal one. While it looks different at 5, 9, 17, 42 and 44, it feels like this time is one in which we are being asked to reckon with what it means to be here in Keezletown, VA in 2020 and to be white and to be loved. My companion read right now is Communion: The Female Search for Love by bell hooks. 

This is one of my greatest challenges right now. To keep unlearning and to approach new learning with curiosity, non-defensiveness, and openness, avoiding the path to self-loathing and impatience and giving up on myself. Let me share a story, one that might shed light on what I'm trying to articulate.

Recently, a Green America email was forwarded to us with a link to watch the documentary Kiss the Ground. Our family watched it together and liked it. The film is described as one where "activists, scientists, farmers and politicians turn to regenerative agriculture to save the planet's topsoil," promoting that as the way to address the climate crisis. We immediately thought of others who might want to see it and sent the link with this note to some family and friends: We encourage a worthwhile "news break" to take a look at something that provides solid information, powerful stories and examples of ways we could engage in healing soils and regenerating the earth! While images and voices of indigenous and people of color were not prominent in the film and this felt like a glaring oversight (that is all too common), the concepts are solid and we can attest to seeing some of them at work on a tiny scale here at Tangly Woods. I am not feeling a ton of confidence in humans working together on a large scale at present, but I'd love to believe that together we could work at reversing the damage we have done to the planet in the coming decades! 

It's a meager step in the right direction that we at least had grown in our awareness enough to note the lack of BIPOC (black, Indigenous and people of color,) voices. This would sadly not have been true years ago when we watched various films that were touted as food justice or environmental documentaries (e.g. Food Inc.). And the only other disclaimers that I'll give before proceeding is that 

1. I don't think either Jason or I saw the film as giving the one and only solution to the state we find ourselves in and 2. My complete lack of knowledge of U.S. pop culture meant I had no awareness when watching the film that they were mostly using celebrities to advance their mission. End of disclaimers and back to taking responsibility for my blind spots!

Our dear friend, Jonathan McRay, took the time to email me a thoughtful response, complete with the reasons they have been wary of the film based on critical reviews written by food justice/agroecology advocates. I will admit that upon my initial reading of the email, I felt a flood of shame and a sense of "will I never get it right?" My Type 1 on the Enneagram flared up and I was ready to just shut my mouth forever because I am clearly not learning quickly enough to not keep tripping over my words and hurting others with my good intentioned misled actions! While the emotions were doing their thing, I was also remembering my need to accept myself (recent definition I'm pondering, thanks to bell hooks: to refuse to be in an adversarial relationship with myself) and to go beyond that to work on a radical self love (thanks Brene Brown for hosting a conversation with Sonya Renee Taylor on "The Body is Not an Apology"). 

So a few days ago, Jason and I spent one of our rare early mornings with mugs of decaf coffee in hand, to take a deeper dive into the critiques of the film we had shared around. Here are the things we read/listened to, that we urge anyone who watches Kiss the Ground to also commit to engaging with. Without the resources below to deepen and complexify your understanding of the documentary, I am hesitant to recommend it. If you can't carve out time for all of them, I recommend the first link if you can only read one thing and the interview if listening to something is easier for you to find time for:

• 'Kiss the Ground' film on regenerative farming is neither regenerative nor groundbreaking 
• Farmer Rishi Review
• 'Kiss the Ground' Misses the Complexity of Climate Solutions in the Soil 
• Chris Newman interview (a Black Indigenous farmer of Sylvanaqua Farm)

If reading or listening to interviews isn't your cup of tea, I have a third option for you: a show or a film! In one of the critiques they recommend watching Gather, a recent film about Indigenous food sovereignty, or the show Tending the Wild. We are eager to begin watching Tending the Wild but did purchase Gather, which we watched together the other evening. We recommend it, and if you do not have the means to rent or purchase it yourself, please be in touch so we can share our copy with you! 

What are a few of my learnings (there are many) from all of this?

• Jason reminded me this morning of something his Grandma often said: "Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can."
• I haven't arrived anywhere, but I'm taking steps.
• I have a lot of deep listening to do. There are things I will never be able to fully know and understand because of the body I inhabit and other aspects of my identity. It's important to acknowledge that and take that awareness with me through life. 
• Indigenous people are not gone! We should not talk of this country's history as if the people no longer exist. Right here in Virginia, the Monacan Nation is currently fighting to save Rassewek, their ancestral burial grounds. James River Water Authority (JRWA) is attempting to build a water pump station on top of it. 
• I have been fed lies for much of my life about the history of this country. Unraveling them is a complex and messy process that involves deep grieving, anger, sadness, embarrassment, a desire to seek something that comforts or paints a brighter picture, taking responsibility, and looking for ways to acknowledge the truth and seek ways to contribute to healing from harms.
• I need to be cautious about "throwing the baby out with the bath water" and not discount completely the contributions that things that are deeply flawed can offer. That's a tough one! 
• White supremacy, capitalism, racism, U.S. exceptionalism, colonization has hurt ALL of us. Our healing is interconnected. Reparations can be one of many parts of the healing process, and it can help all of us.
• As we work to understand our complicated and painful history, to take responsibility, to acknowledge harms, to heal wounds and fight for justice, we need to be cognizant of the temptation to become like the very thing we are attempting to dismantle and heal from and fight against. 
• I'm not going to get it "right" or "perfect" all the time. It reminds me of something I heard years ago that was so important in my parenting journey - that rupture is normal in relationships but what is most critical for healthy attachments is the repair. That feels useful here too - I will make mistakes. I can wallow in those (I have a long history and much experience with that approach) or I can reflect, take responsibility and work at repair.

If you have made it to this point, thank you! And know that I'd love to hear how my thoughts intersect with yours. These reflections are in process so I share them in an incomplete kind of way - you could say they are "in motion." I was reading parts of something I wrote a week ago, and already I would frame some things differently. My commitment is to stay in motion and to keep unlearning/learning and to engage others in the process. I'm very grateful for many others who have not given up on me and keep challenging me. In the end I feel grateful we watched Kiss the Ground as a family, grateful we sent an email around to some about it, grateful to Jonathan for taking the time to engage us at a deeper level about it, grateful for the time Jason and I took together to process that and expand/deepen our understanding of a lot of really complex and painful things, grateful for new resources for our family like watching Gather, grateful for having a few more of my blind spots exposed, and grateful that our girls are getting to be part of their parents' processes and maybe getting a head start on things I'm just learning in my 40's!