Dear John,
If I’m being fully honest with you, I’m struggling this Thanksgiving. I’m usually pretty good at finding the bright side of things. I love being with Meg and Marek and Rosa, and we have blessings beyond measure. But amidst this lonely holiday, without my parents and sister and nieces and nephews, without our silly traditions, and our serious ones…I’m finding it a lot harder than usual to lean into my gratitude practice.
So I’m trying something that feels a little bit like cheating (although fully consistent with social distancing): I’m imagining myself forward to next year’s Thanksgiving, praying that we will be back around a full table with relatives gathered from across the country, lots of hugs, without masks, lots of joy and laughing and kids running around. We’ll look back on this year, and I know we’ll cry some about how hard it was, about what we missed, about what -- and who -- we lost.
Thinking about looking back from the far side of this pandemic, imagining how we’ll feel looking back, my gratitude is overwhelming.
To the nurses and doctors and health care staff, who have saved so many lives and faced so much trauma, and who continue to expand testing and treatment, and stay patient with us.
To the principals and teachers, who are doing amazing work to keep our kids safe, learning, and engaged despite a mind-numbing lack of clarity, devices, and support.
To the Neighbor Network callers who are connecting with isolated seniors, telling them jokes and stories, helping them get what they need, and developing long-lasting relationships that are nourishing people on both sides of the line.
To the mutual aid volunteers and food bank staff who are providing emergency food support for millions of New Yorkers.
To the sanitation and transit and parks workers, keeping our streets clean and our subways running and our parks (that I don’t know how I’d survive without) open.
To the folks doing outreach to homeless New Yorkers, to mental health professionals, to the staff of the new “shower bus,” to countless human service workers.
To everyone in our food supply chain, from migrant farm workers to oft-maltreated food factory workers, truck drivers, grocery store clerks, restaurant staff, small business people, and app delivery workers (to whom we still aren’t even providing paid sick leave).
To the participatory budgeting volunteers who are still organizing, researching, and building local democracy (I think of you especially when I revel under the restored Endale Arch in Prospect Park)
And especially to my extraordinary staff who have worked with dedication and creativity to serve our community during this difficult time.
Similar themes came through in all the messages of thanks that many of you shared with me over the last few days: deep gratitude for family and community, and appreciation for the people working hard to serve others, whether in schools or in emergency food supply lines or organizing for justice:
I am grateful for all the frontline workers and people in NYC who are organizing to help others in their time of need. Thank you for all your doing to help your neighbors!
I am grateful for my health, my family, our warm home and my amazing community of friends and neighbors. And to fellow activists like you!
We're grateful for the teachers and leaders at PS 29 and MS 51 for showing up for our kids and their peers.
I am grateful for good neighbors and Good Neighbors of Park Slope. I am grateful for my book group continuing to meet on Zoom.
Grateful for activists who are fighting for justice when it seems hard to have hope.
Tomorrow and this weekend, consider sharing some of your gratitude with small businesses too. This Black Friday, so many of them are deep in the red and struggling to keep their doors open. Many small businesses rely on the income from the holiday season to get them through the rest of the year, please help them stay afloat by doing your holiday shopping locally this year. (And urge your state legislators to take up the small business recovery lease program I am working on with Councilmember Keith Powers, Assemblymember Yuh-line Niou and Senator Brian Kavanagh).
Holidays can remind us of loss and loneliness even without the anxiety and isolation of a global pandemic. And when we’re feeling isolated, it’s even harder to reach out, even without zoom fatigue. So it’s worth remembering, as Ezra Klein shared in this powerful conversation on America’s loneliness epidemic with former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murhthi, that “sometimes the best thing we can do to help ourselves out of a hole is to help others out of it, too.” So I hope you are finding ways to check in with loved ones even if you are spending this day of thanks physically apart.
Wishing you a good holiday, as best as it can be under the circumstances, hopefully made a little easier through gratitude, and connection, and imagining the one we’ll hope to have next year.
Brad
