Thankful

I hate that this blog has turned into something so negative when I had zero intentions of doing so. I guess I am just an over emotional person having a human reaction to the horrors going on all over the world.

We all know the true meaning behind the first Thanksgiving celebration.  We all should know that the image that they have shown us since grade school of the pilgrims and natives eating together, is the furthest from what actually happened. I’m not a historian or here to teach history so if this isn’t common knowledge, I highly recommend that you take a moment and look into the true story behind the celebration of Thanksgiving. In reality it is not something to be celebrated, especially if you come from place that was colonized. We can leave that talk for another time though.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Growing up I would look forward to it every single year because my mom would turn into a Betty Crocker. She would wake up at the ass crack of dawn to put Betsy in the oven and spend the entire day cooking. It was a day to celebrate the life of my grandmother that passed and cook all the traditional Puerto Rican food while celebrating family. My mother would host 25+ people at my house and we would all eat, drink and dance all night. It was a family tradition that I always wanted to take over as an adult. I can’t remember exactly why my mother stopped hosting, but it stopped and it has never been the same since. The first Thanksgiving I spent without my family I cried. I was surrounded by my boyfriend at the times family eating food, that was not traditional for me. I remember crying every year because I felt like I no longer had my family.  For years I no longer looked forward to my favorite holiday, I would straight up dread the thought of the holiday season.

Fast forward to 2020. The world shut down. It was probably the worst my depression has ever been. I felt so insanely low I felt like life was pointless. I was upset at the people still going out and partying while I was watching people upset about their sick family members. It was the first year that I had nowhere to go on Thanksgiving. So, I decided to take over my mother’s tradition. I spent hours watching different videos and looking up different recipes from Puerto Rican cooks. For a couple weeks before the holiday I would do practice runs of the food I planned on making to makes sure it tasted ok. My first Betsy was a success. She was nice, juicy, and full of flavor. It was one of the few times I really felt proud of something I did.

Now it’s 2023, and I am getting ready to prep my next turkey. I’m getting ready to celebrate with my dad’s side of my family. It isn’t going to be as big of the celebration as it was years ago, but I am incredibly thankful to be able to have something to look forward to again. I am hoping that next year I will get to fully take over the holiday and I will get to have both sides of my family celebrating under one roof. I want to have all 4 of my siblings together and start our own combined family traditions. I want to become the person that brings back the big family holidays and gives us all something to look forward to each year. I want to be able to invite anyone that doesn’t have a family to celebrate with, the opportunity to join into the new tradition. I have spent about 25 years of my life being forced to split holidays between two different families and I no longer want that. I want to finally sit down and eat with everyone together. I think I deserve that experience once in my lifetime and it would be amazing if it turned into more than that.