Holy Chaos

Thanksgiving has always been a sensory holiday for me, food, noise, warmth, hands passing plates, children running, and the unmistakable smell of turkey that somehow reached every corner of the house. Growing up in a family of nine children meant that Thanksgiving was never small, never quiet, and certainly never simple. It was a production, a tradition, and a kind of holy chaos.

My father, who was a butcher by trade, was always in charge of the turkey.
My mother handled everything else: potatoes, turnips, sweet potatoes crowned with marshmallows, creamed white onions, and a parade of pies that felt endless. And of course, the sacred relics of her pottery phase: the ceramic celery-shaped trays that only came out once a year, filled with stuffed celery as if it were an offering.

There was always a nut tray. Always too much food. Always extra people, grandparents, friends, stragglers, anyone who needed a place to land that day. Eleven of us lived under that roof, but somehow the headcount became twenty or more every year. Thanksgiving was expandable, elastic, a holiday that stretched to fit whoever arrived.

Getting the house ready was a full-family event. It didn’t feel like a chore; it felt like ceremony. A holiday that required nothing but food and gratitude—which, in my childhood, felt simple enough.

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After We All Grew Up

As we moved into adulthood, the traditions shifted in that subtle way life does, never all at once, but unmistakably. Thanksgiving became the holiday where all the grandchildren filled the house. Loud again, joyful again, different but familiar.

The year my mother died was a tough one. Our first Thanksgiving without Faith-our anchor. There was an ache in the air that no amount of sweet potatoes or marshmallows could soften. And yet, somehow, we still found love and laughter and gratitude anyway. Grief didn’t erase the holiday, it wove itself into it. Faith found a way in name and in our hearts.

My older sister eventually took over hosting. By then I was living back in New York, but I’d hear the stories of another twenty-plus people gathering, eating, celebrating. It made me smile, the tradition living on, shapeshifting but intact.

And always, my father would start the meal with a prayer.

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The Last Turkey

The year before my father died, I spoke to him the next day, as I often did. Something in his voice felt different—gentle, reflective, almost like he knew.

“I just roasted my last turkey,” he said.

My heart tightened around the edges of that truth. “How was it?” I asked.

He chuckled, that warm rumble I loved. “Honestly? It was dry. Not great. And I messed up the gravy.”

I tried to console him, but he waved it off, then got quiet, serious in that way he occasionally did.

“I’m going to give you some advice, Jennifer,” he said. He was always one of the few who used my full name. “Don’t let messing something up once or twice, after doing it well a hundred times ruin the present moment or your memory of doing it well so many other times. The mistakes teach us. They humble us. And they keep us learning.”

Then he added something he often said out loud in the last years of his life.
“I don’t have regrets.”

His words landed the way certain truths do, clean, sharp, unforgettable.

It’s strangely poetic that I met my first tantra teacher the day before Thanksgiving that year. That teacher often reminds me, “Sometimes success is a poor teacher”. Two men, very different in so many ways, yet such similar words to me. Now, looking back, that Thanksgiving I feel the how one doorway was opening just as another was quietly closing.

Tantra reshaped my life, my work, my body, my understanding of the sacred. And that Thanksgiving lives in me as the hinge between past and future—the last turkey, the first initiation.

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The Thanksgiving I Live Now

For the last twenty years, my sister and I have created our own Thanksgiving traditions. With Annie, Chris(her husband, my nephew Zach and now his fiancé, Carolina. Our table isn’t as filled as the one’s of my childhood but the deep energy of love remains all the same. Yes, there is food—some old favorites, some new. But the real holiday lives in the love, gratitude, shared stories, music drifting into the night, sometimes a board game, sometimes quiet.

The thread of my childhood still runs through it all.

The celery trays.
The crowded tables.
My father’s laughter.
My mother’s sweet smile and recipes.
The feeling of being held by something bigger—family, memory, love.

Jack and Faith, my parents have been gone for a long time now, but they’re still here.
They are here in the perfect moments and the messy ones.
Here in the dry turkeys and the ruined gravies.
Here in the things we get right and the things we learn from.

They are here, loving me through every season.

And so Thanksgiving remains what it always was:
A day of food, yes.
A day of gratitude, always.
But most of all—a day where the past and present sit at the same table, passing dishes and stories, reminding me that love doesn’t disappear.
It just changes form and keeps on feeding us.

.

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🕊️ Thanksgiving Prayer of Lineage & Oath

And, this year like my father, I too have my own prayers.

Today I speak a prayer that is both new and ancient —
my own words born from the roots I grew from and watered by the path I’ve created.

I offer this prayer knowing I do not stand alone.
As I breathe into the power of my own voice I feel Jack and Faith at my back —
steady, warm, in the way only they could be.
And behind them, all who came before me:

my grandparents,
the aunts and uncles,
the friends who became family,
the beloveds who helped shape the Thanksgiving table of my life.

Some are living.
Some have long since left their bodies.
But they are here.
The lineage is here.
They stand behind me like a Pride,
like a quiet council,
like a field of memory and blessing.

Their prayers were not the same as mine,
and yet — at the core — not so different.

They prayed for love.
For unity.
For nourishment.
For gratitude.
For a family that endured.

And now I pray in my own voice,
from my own path,
through the teachings and initiations that have shaped who I have become.
I pray with the Code in my bones,
with the White Lion Wisdoms in my breath,
with Pride Energy glowing at my center.

Here is my Thanksgiving prayer:

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✨ My Prayer

Thank You
for the life that brought me to this table.
For the ones who fed me, taught me, challenged me,
and sometimes broke me open
so I could become more whole.

Thank You
for the lineage that stands behind me —
my parents,
my ancestors,
the spirits and teachers who guided me
from the edges of the Unspeakable World.

Thank You
for the blessing of imperfection —
for the dry turkeys,
the ruined gravies,
the moments where things didn’t go as planned.
May I remember my father’s wisdom:
that mistakes humble us,
teach us,
and keep us human.

Thank You
for the breath in my chest
and the truth rising through my life

✨ Closing Blessing

May this table nourish us.
May this gratitude soften us.
May this lineage strengthen us.
May this love sustain us.
And may we, too, become good ancestors
for those who come after us.

Amen.
And so it is.

✨Happy Thanksgiving

Jennifer