How to Have a Peaceful Thanksgiving

Holidays (and especially Thanksgiving) represent a special opportunity if you want to heal your relationships. 

Our relationships have been torn apart by the political and cultural divide that we’ve been experiencing in the United States. If each of our families are going to have a peaceful Thanksgiving, we need to start to work on mending those fractured relationships. 

Rituals like Thanksgiving define our lives. It’s a time to connect with those we love (or used to love and at least feel we ought to love). It grounds us and gives us life. It’s a time to get out a needle and thread to mend a fractured relationship. 

But our difficulties in talking to each other mean that we often don’t take advantage of this opportunity. Among those who have to cross a political divide, we have cut those dinners short.  We spend less time together than those who don’t because we don’t have the skills to mend those tears and to bring peace into our relationships and our hearts.

Earlier editions of this newsletter contain lots of ideas of what you can say, and I have two more suggestions:

First: Focus on the first three parts of the model I’ve been writing about: Ask, Listen & Affirm. If you haven’t read them already, click on the links above. There is the last step, responding, but save it for another time. Those three steps are enough to do, and you’ll build up your relationship capital by just doing that.

Second: If you have any input, choose a grace (blessing) that is focused on the themes of people coming together despite differences and working together to build the future. Those are two of the tools that can be very useful.

Here’s a sample grace. Feel free to adapt it and make it your own, and please post your experiences and your own grace on the Thanksgiving newsletter. I would love to read it, and you may help someone else.

Dear God,
Thank you for bringing us together on this day in which we commemorate the Pilgrims and the Native Americans crossing their divides and coming together to feed each other. We celebrate their courage and willingness. And we celebrate the hard work that Americans of all types have come together to build this country. Despite all the changes to this country over the centuries, we are still Americans who work to make our country and our lives better. Help us to identify ways that we can help to move this country forward.

Consider this investment in a long-term relationship. Here’s last year Thanksgiving post for another option.

Please share this with anyone you think it would help and subscribe to learn more about the tools that can help you mend your fractured relationship.

This newsletter was adapted from my forthcoming book, Mending Fractured Relationships: How to Have a Peaceful Thanksgiving.