Gratitude and Truth

Written by: Laura Mansfield

Early Monday morning – 2:32am EST to be exact - we were greeted by a full moon eclipse.

I’ve heard it said that full moon eclipses are a time of letting go - of revisioning, revisiting, and rethinking.

2020 has been a year of learning, transformation, transition, discovery and for many, hardship and loss.

For me personally, this year has been full of it all - loss, transformation AND gratitude.

In June, my father-in-law passed away. He departed with grace leaving on his 52nd wedding anniversary, holding the hand of my mother-in-law and his middle child, my husband. Many others also departed this year – close friends, family members, folks from our inner circle. So many goodbyes. Revisioning a future without them.

2020 has greeted me with healing, evolution and transformation. In the midst of it all, some days it’s hard to breath. There have been lots of tears and lots of laughter. So many dichotomies.

AND I’m still in it.

Starting in April I began to use the chrysalis metaphor for my life – caterpillar to butterfly. I still feel like I’m moving towards enormous change, a grand new chapter.

While I can feel my imaginal cells already formed I’m still not sure what the future looks like. I have my visions, my ideas, my beliefs. AND I know the universe has a sense of humor and rarely do things look the way I think they will. Yet, I still believe. I know I am here for a reason and I know I need to let go of attachment and control of how I get there.

So, I sit in my discomfort – still – and I wait. I feel the cold of the butterfly coming out of the cocoon with wet wings still not ready to fly. It feels like the cocoon is still clinging to me – or maybe I to it. I know the other side is beautiful. I get glimpses of it in the early morning sunrise, in the snow on the trees, in the blue sky surrounding the mountains.

Melody Beattie said, “Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

Last week, on Thanksgiving, I sat in gratitude. Despite this year – or maybe because of it – my vision is so much clearer. I have much to be thankful for. My health, my family, their health, my friends, my home, my work, my yurt (yes my yurt, I work from a yurt in my backyard - hence the name of this blog). Really, I have an incredible life.

Yet, I remain curious about my constant search for more – is it consumerism, is it my soul calling? – probably a bit of both. Yet I know if I stay rooted in gratitude and love, my life seems to flow that much easier. I am happy. Joy blows to me on the wind.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. And this year I got to sit in the truth of this day. It is a day that was painted in my childhood as a time of peace and the breaking of bread. Yet, this day was NOT that for the Native American indigenous peoples who lived on this land before us.

Thanksgiving and the days that follow are days of mourning. And so I sit with this as well. The dichotomy of what I have been taught and what the truth is. Maybe Thanksgiving is about giving thanks for all that I have and also about holding space for those in mourning.

Maybe Thanksgiving is about looking to the future, to the possibilities that exist if we are able to acknowledge the truth of our history, to claim what has happened and envision a new way of being together. Transformation, healing, change…

I must claim that I am a white woman of privilege. That my ancestors invaded this land generations ago. I must work to own the truth of this past and find grace in my position and how I move forward. It is my responsibility to plant seeds for a better tomorrow with my family and friends. To listen to, move away from, as Mahtowin Munro, Lakota and co-leader of the United American Indians of New England said, "The myths behind Thanksgiving” as these “have been a factor in erasing Indigenous realities for decades, especially the myth that the Pilgrim and other European invasions were peaceful or friendly.”

So, sitting in discomfort, and sitting in gratitude and truth. It has become a practice for me this year.

As 2020 moves towards its crescendo - what am I being guided to let go of? How can each of us move into 2021 with grace, honesty, discernment, as more loving, giving, open and alive humans rooted in the truth of our past and the potential of our future?