Choose Your Tribe
I remember the first time I chose not to go home for a holiday gathering with my family. I was 21, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made.
I’d dropped out of college and was living and working in Rehoboth Beach, DE, the “Nation’s Summer Capital.” I didn’t have a car, so leaving town meant having to ride a Greyhound bus to DC. The logistics of going from here to there created space in my thinking for which I am ever grateful.
For the first time in my life, I realized I had a choice.
The previous Thanksgiving, when Mom, in a drunken outburst, told me I was a terrible person because I accidentally spilled the gravy, I ran to my bedroom and locked the door. The wine I’d been sipping all night helped me pass out but didn’t relieve me of the shame. I hadn’t just done something wrong by spilling the gravy; I was wrong. Mom had been telling me that in a variety of different ways my whole life.
In 1982, I made a reservation for one at the Avenue Restaurant on Rehoboth Avenue.
The walk from the hostess station to my table seemed to take forever. I looked around and took in all the families gathered together at their tables. A fleeting pang of loneliness passed through me when I thought everyone was staring at and judging me, wondering why a young woman like me would be alone for Thanksgiving. Maybe they thought I was a loser.
Once seated, everyone went back to their conversations, and I kept myself company with a book. For the first time in my life, I ate a holiday meal in peace. My first calm Thanksgiving. Ever. What a relief.
This was the beginning of understanding that I have the power to choose. That just because it has been doesn’t mean it has to always be so. For the love of God, why would I want to return for Christmas where my mother insisted — still in our adulthood — to buy my older sister and me the same outfits? I hated it when I was a young girl and was flabbergasted by the insanity of it still happening at 42. She never really knew me. Or Dad’s being too busy and resorting to a check. In an envelope. On the tree.
I could either keep going back to that dry well, keeping up the façade, or I could take charge and do something different.
Friendsgivings became my favorite way to celebrate. Like the time a group of friends went for a hike and shared our Thanksgiving meal at a restaurant in a nearby town. Or another time when I was volunteering in Appalachia, and Sherman Wooten led a hike through the Kentucky hills that ended in a gathering by a fire and a bountiful family-style southern meal of coworkers.
At Christmas, I gave myself permission to start buying myself the presents I wanted so I could stop being disappointed repeatedly. To this day, I still wrap gifts for myself and put them in my stocking and under the tree so I, too, will experience joy, not disappointment on Christmas morning. And I am not Christian.
Like everyone, I want to be loved in real and meaningful ways that recognize who I am. That make me feel seen, special, and understood. When raised in a dysfunctional home, these things are elusive at best.
If you want to really enjoy the holidays, make plans that fill you up. Invite others to come along because though we can do this alone, why would we when we can choose our tribe?
