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! 

Nora's 13th birthday and Halloween

Friday, October 30 marked 13 years since Nora was born. After a long 10 hour sprint for work Thursday to try to catch up from being off, I put on my autoresponder again for the day of her birth to be able to fully focus that day on our memories of Nora and time with Jason and the girls. I'm so grateful looking back on the day that it included a hike up to Hensley's Pond. I needed that time then and need it as I look back on that anniversary day! Our first stop along the way, was a persimmon tree that was starting to drop ripe fruit. Since our trees are bare this year, this was a special treat!

When we returned from the hike, it was a tight hour or so of preparing our family to get out the door and in the elements for the next 7 hours or so. We had decided some weeks back to give an "in the time of COVID" memorial blood drive a try. While I had been questioning the wisdom of that choice in recent days, I was ready to make the best of it and was prepared that it would be different in so many ways from the previous ones - no homemade snacks, no kids, masked/distanced visiting only, no hugs... It was especially hard to not be there as a whole family (but we knew the kids would much prefer cousin/aunt time down the road to sitting outside in the cold by the parking lot for hours - and they did!!). 

I'm still trying to process many of my mixed and messy feelings about the drive. So let's start with the "easy stuff" to share. In the end we had 38 donors come to give. 9 of those that came were "deferred" which means that they were like me and turned down for some reason - in my case I was one tenth too low on my iron! And then 2 had unsuccessful donations, one of those being Kali as they missed her vein and didn't get it even after some uncomfortable digging around. So 27 pints of blood donated via the drive and so I'm told by the Red Cross that it was a "good drive" or a "success." I very much hope all that was donated makes its way to bodies that need it and are helped along in their healing journeys by it!

And I feel really grateful for our friends who joined, for the friends of our friends (whose daughter Norah died) who joined, and the other persons that didn't know either of our families but were just looking for a place to give. I was especially heartened by the first time donors who had come and were clearly facing some fears in order to give. I was glad for these human and real points of connection. Are you waiting for the "But...?" If so, you are right that it is coming! And it is not just about the fact that by the end of us sitting outside for many hours, it was pretty cold! That would have been easy to bear on its own!

I think, for the purposes of this space, I'm going to just share the analogy that came to mind the morning after the drive as my thoughts and emotions were still tumbling around. I was partly a little surprised and perplexed by the intensity of my anger at the end of the drive. The sadness and tears was less surprising as I sat reading our blog book compilation of writings about Nora's birth and life and our grief journey following her death. But it was the mixing of that, with some intense frustration about the drive that had me doing a bit more stewing. 

Here's what came to me: Working with the Red Cross to host a blood drive is to our NICU experience like working with Virginia Blood Services to host a blood drive was to our PICU/palliative care experience. In other words VERY different! I was noting earlier in the day how often Nora's birthday is a more painful season for me even then the time around her death. While that has always seemed strange in many ways, it also makes a lot of sense in other ways. The weeks that Nora was in the NICU were so full of confusion, difficulty connecting with caregivers, trying to bond and care for a baby that nurses sometimes called their baby, separation from Kali, feeling out of control and like we weren't fully integrated into Nora's life and care, etc... After 6+ months of loving and living with Nora, we arrived back at UVA and got connected to palliative care. We were seen as "the experts" on Nora, were fully included in her care, were allowed to form relationships and partnerships with her caregivers, were listened to and relied upon, etc... When it was clear that she would not live, we were given the freedom to have family and friends come to say goodbye and to rearrange the hospital room into a sacred space for saying goodbye and were allowed to fudge on normal protocols--if and when reason suggested such--to fit our needs and Nora's. The end result was the same and excruciatingly sad, but the process made so much difference to Nora at the time and to us as we grieved her death.

At the blood drive the other night, I realized that if I find value in giving some of my time and energy to organizing blood drives, I can still feel free to do that in the future. But I need to extricate that from Nora's birthday and her death anniversary. These blood drives started as a meaningful way to remember Nora together and to invite others into that process and ritual of remembrance (while doing something valuable together in the process) - and the staff at Virginia Blood Services became meaningful parts of those rituals of remembrance and even found ways to make them extra special. We still want to donate blood together. And it sounds meaningful to invite friends and family to join us in that. But hosting a Red Cross blood drive puts me right into the mix of a massive bureaucratic structure with what seems like miles of red tape that seems to strip it down to an extractive industry mostly caring about # of pints and not much about the humans giving those pints. On Friday, it was just too much for me...

Let me end on a cheerier note about last evening! The girls were dreaming of finding a fun way to celebrate Halloween at Tangly Woods, and it was indeed a fun time complete with apple bobbing, eating homemade donuts off strings and the adults hiding for the kids to find and get treats from us! We had a fairy, a bunny and a flamingo searching for us. Tala won being the most difficult and the last person the kids found!

And I do think it's the first time one of our kids has decided to take a dip in the tub AFTER apple bobbing. Leave it to Terah!

Savoring all we could in October

I told Jason that I really wanted to prioritize catching up on October here before we get any farther into November. The month ahead looms large with a substantial splash (or tidal wave) of uncertainty with plenty of anxiety coming along for the ride. Still wondering what it looks like to be mentally, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, logistically, etc... prepared for the unknown. Randomly this week the song lyric, "It's the end of the world as we know it..." (by R.E.M., as it turns out) has gone through my mind. I could not have said who wrote the song or any of the other lyrics. So I just looked it up and had to chuckle that was comes right after that line is "and I feel fine." So not so relevant after all! 

But here are some snapshots of the things that have sustained, energized, excited, fed, motivated, supported, and encouraged us over the last few weeks. 

For the last number of years we have enjoyed a fall weekend get away to WV with 3 generations of friends (the Myers-Benner-Godshall-Showalter crew). It was a loss to let that go, but we did enjoy an afternoon/evening outdoor physically distanced gathering that included some reminiscing of favorite memories from those trips. I'm grateful for friendships with deep roots in these times where it is more difficult to connect in the ways that are often most meaningful to us. And I've been amazed at our kids' ability to adapt to varied ways of being together. 

After only connecting with our small group via zoom since the pandemic started, we decided to give an outdoor physically distanced picnic gathering a go. I found myself just looking around at the blankets of families and soaking it up. I hadn't realized how I had missed just being in the same physical space. And the youngest member of our small group captivated my attention - being just on the verge of walking, she was exploring the yard with the cute curiosity of a budding toddler. I realized, too, how much I miss snuggling babies and playing with little people (as much as I try to cuddle Terah like my baby sometimes, it's become increasingly difficult to fool myself)! 

Our days have continued to mostly involve me in front of a screen and Jason out on the land - we won't go into how that translates into the our states of emotional and mental health! Following a late summer commitment to a friend, I followed through on a second "no work email" week here at the end of October. The rest of this scrapbook page will share a few of the highlights of the week. I'll start with some fall garden/harvest highlights.

Have you ever seen a ginger that is as cute as this? When I need to smile I just take a look at this photo. It tickles me every time!

We didn't just grow funny looking ginger, we grew more of it this year. And so we felt we had enough to experiment with so we tried candied ginger. It worked (if you want to use a fair amount of sugar to sweeten up your ginger and make it into a snack). Taking that and dark chocolate covering it didn't hurt it at all!

We thought it was going to be a year with no figs but one day my eye caught a few fruits ripening. It was a day the girls were not here and so Jason and I enjoyed a few and then since found one more so Tala could try one. But that's the extent of this year's harvest.

I'll try to not just focus on what isn't thriving here, as it often my tendency. We enjoyed a first this year when our bitter lemon (otherwise known as trifoliate orange or flying dragon fruit or hardy citrus) actually produced a crop. One of the perks of me being off work and our schedule being a bit freer is that Jason did some online research and found a recipe for making marmalade with it. Interestingly enough, it tastes very much like grapefruit! I can't say I love it, but it was a fun and worthwhile experiment and it's really fun to know that every few years we might get a citrus crop!

After missing out on most of the fall cover cropping, I was not about to miss planting garlic with the family! And the timing worked to do it during the time I was off. With Jason having prepped the soil and me and the younger gals getting cloves ready for planting the day before, it was by far the fastest garlic planting in Tangly Woods' history! Now we watch and wait and dream of garlic scape pesto.

Our diet is turning oranger by the day, with less green things coming in the door and a lot of "first use" squash and sweet potatoes that need to be used quickly. That said, I just noticed that Kali's collards are surging and we still have gorgeous parsley and the nettles look fabulous and there is some lettuce ready for picking - again being in front of a screen most days means it goes awhile sometimes between my spins around the land. Terah's birthday cutting board is now hung conveniently at her height on the kitchen wall and she is excited about being grown up enough to help with a big sharp knife. And, she is not working so hard as to be too hot for clothes. This child makes her Grandpa Myers cold often just by looking at her, as she is often found with very few clothes even when the rest of us are bundled up!

Now to the major highlight of this work vacation week - Jason and I cashed in a birthday coupon from my parents to spend 2 nights at a WV state park ALL BY OURSELVES! The girls stayed home and enjoyed the time with grandparents and Tala (our animals were cared for, our house was cleaned, and some of our kids tried to say that they had more fun than us but they didn't). Our time at Watoga State Park was all and more than we could have wished for. Before we left, I was already worried about how fast it would go. And then once there the time felt expansive and the connecting deep and meaningful.

I realized that I probably underestimate how much time in each day goes to the fact that our family includes 5 humans with needs! When that gets simplified down to 2 and we are just feeding ourselves, brushing our own teeth, I'm only getting my own self clothed and ready to get out the door, hiking at our pace without kids getting tired or hot or bored or... then all of a sudden it seems a day is quite long! We went on a number of long hikes, we played games, we read (a lot!), Jason played through most of his songs, and the first night I was in bed by 7:30 p.m. and didn't get out of bed until 8:30 the next morning! 

The fall woods was the perfect place for me to be with my thoughts and emotions. Watching the leaves fall from the trees, and dance theirway to the ground, was the backdrop for my reflections on letting go, on death and loss, and on what it means to "be enough." I was so grateful for the time in nature and with my best friend and partner. It was sweet to be reminded again how very much we love being together!! 

The only excitement from the entire time (for public consumption anyway), was our attempts at a cozy fire in the fireplace in our cabin on our second/last night there. We had all the components for a romantic evening in our little one room cabin, until Jason got the fire rolling and we realize that the fire place was horribly designed. We had all the lights off in the cabin except a lamp and I was reading our Collapsing Consciously meditation for the day. I realized partway through that I was having a hard time breathing deeply between sentences. While the subject matter is sometimes enough to make me catch my breath, it seemed more related to the fire. Turning on the main light, we discovered the cabin was full of smoke and soon after the smoke alarm started going off. It was wired in but with an internal battery so removing it from the wall still didn't stop the piercing sound that was going out the opened windows to the surrounding cabins. So we stuffed it under a pillow and proceeded to open wide all the windows and then took ourselves out to the porch to read while looking in from time to time to check the fire. We had had such a delightful time up to that point that this minor glitch was hardly noticed.

We checked out Wednesday morning but took a few hours for a final hike (6 mile round trip) to a look out tower, a few more leaf showers savored, a few more wintergreen berries consumed and then we were actually eager and ready to re-enter the fray.

Or at least, I thought I was! I don't think we were home an hour before I went to Jason and I told him I was already pining for our cabin in the woods! And I believe I've said it a few times since then.