The myth that is often told around Thanksgiving is a tale of friendship between the Native Americans and the settlers, but it stands in the place of what really happened after Thanksgiving—the erasure of the experience of Native Americans in the early 1600s and in the decades after that as more and more Europeans came to the "New World." Often, especially in school settings, a peaceful picture is painted of the event—a harvest celebration—and not much is mentioned about the Native American experience. (Full piece can be read here.)
For the past three years, I've consciously refrained from saying "Happy Thanksgiving.”
Both in initiating the phrase and responding with it.
Nonetheless, I have still made the choice to sit down with my family on the fourth Thursday of November and take part in the holiday, even though the thought of its existence brings up an immense amount of grief.
I hold no judgment for those who say “Happy Thanksgiving.” After all, for the majority of my life, I was unconscious of the implication my participation in the holiday could carry. It wasn't until later that I truly realized how the celebration is intricately woven into a narrative crafted by America for its own branding and financial gain.
During a recent conversation with a friend, I said: “I wish more people cared or took the time to at least try to understand. But then again, I was also late. So I get it.” To which she responded:
“How could you not be ‘late’? We live in a world that values black and brown bodies very differently than others. Media, but western media especially tells stories of people they think are of value or have that from which they can gain profit.”
Upon hearing this, I immediately felt seen.
As challenging as it has been, I have spent the past month and a half exercising my voice and doing my best to keep Palestinian stories alive. Not just through social media, but also within as many physical spaces I feel safe enough to do so, even though part of me has been terrified every time.
At Familiar Voices, an open mic held at Tea at Shiloh, I shared a beautiful excerpt from a post by writer Anam Raheem, who writes pieces about her personal connection to Palestine. As the final speaker, I noticed that only one person (my friend, Go) had briefly touched on current events before my turn. I was freaking out inside, unsure of how the room might react. In that pivotal moment, as I read what I had to say, my heart raced, sweat formed, and my voice quivered. The room felt eerily silent as I walked back to my seat. And then a sudden breakthrough occurred when someone in the crowd exclaimed, "I'm Palestinian, and I love you.”
In a one-on-one workplace meeting, I shared my struggle with sleep due to thoughts about the genocide. The response from the other person left me irritable and appalled, as they acknowledged the severity of what was happening in Palestine, but attributed blame to Hamas, suggesting that Israel was merely defending themselves. I countered with a Trevor Noah analogy, aiming to diplomatically illustrate the flawed thinking, but it felt insufficient in conveying the depth of the issue.
Blaire Quiñones, a fellow poet, held her first poetry workshop, and at the end of it we were invited to share what we had written. I wrote a poem about Gaza, and as I shared it out loud, again, I was nervous and sweating.
I’ve been calling my reps using the 5 calls app consistently. Even though I’ve gotten used to leaving voicemails after hours, there was one time in a power hour call with a zoom group when I called during business hours and freaked out when someone answered. To the point where I hung up because I had no idea how to respond (I’ll stick to the voicemails, lol).
These are just to name a few.
Typically, I'm not one to be outspoken. But this tendency is particularly pronounced when I’m around my family. (Unless, of course, I reach a breaking point where my pent-up frustration suddenly erupts, which then causes me to retreat into avoidant mode). I realize there's some serious unpacking for me to do on why this is, but my initial take is that I've been ingrained with the belief that questioning or challenging my elders is inherently wrong. The conditioning runs deep, perpetuating the idea that regardless of the logic behind their statements, my elders are deemed superior.
Beyond the topic of genocide, I frequently notice how timid I am at the family dinner table more than anywhere else.
This year, as I sat with my family on November 23rd, thoughts of Palestine weighed heavy on my heart, and I felt guilt stirring inside of me for shrinking, feeling like my voice didn’t matter, and staying silent.
In the following days, I kept repeatedly telling myself, “I should’ve said something.”
I spoke about this with my therapist and he presented me with this question: “Even if you were to say something, and they didn’t agree or listen, then what?”
After taking a few seconds to think about this, I was hit with the reminder of how change doesn’t always happen in an instant. It didn’t for me, and it won’t with my family. And it won’t with me and my relationship to my family.
No matter how often the word surfaces, "should" has never proven beneficial for me. Instead, it tends to morph my guilt to shame, crushing my spirit and motivation to engage in meaningful work. So as I noticed that this year, and more clearly in therapy, I decided to stop “shoulding” all over myself, and instead meet myself—kindly—exactly where I was at. I chose to spend my time focused on the changes that were taking place in so many other aspects of my life.
When I first began my personal journey toward liberation, I was genuinely taken aback by the things I'd been oblivious to for so long. I felt betrayed. I felt dumb. I felt like a fool. At some point, it finally all made sense to me why I had spent a good chunk of my life grappling with self-loathing and a persistent sense of inadequacy.
Once the fog lifted, and I could see crystal clear the ways in which colonization, occupation, genocide and capitalism worked, I wanted nothing more than to express my rage in every way possible and tell other people who I saw myself in all about what I had discovered on my path. This initially seemed like a noble attempt until I came to the sobering realization that not everyone in my life was necessarily ready to dive into a journey of healing.
And so I’ve spend much of this past year reflecting on how I’d rather spend my energy.
Being at that dinner table with my family and talking to my therapist about my experience after led to a much needed reminder that my family was not the group of people I was ready to engage with around these topics, yet.
When I first got into entrepreneurship, one of my mentors asked: "What kind of people do you want to help?" My initial response was a broad "everyone!" But he wisely steered me away from that notion, emphasizing the importance of honing in on a specific audience.
As we continued to delve deeper into this topic, we came to the conclusion that my focus was to help people who were READY to be helped. If someone required minimal persuasion, perhaps a 5% nudge, I could invest some energy in influencing. However, the primary emphasis was on the people who were genuinely interested in what I was doing and who wanted to learn more without me having to twist their arm.
As someone who grew up as an only child, I felt a lot of pressure from my parents to be their American dream child. To get good grades. To become a nurse. To have the perfect family. To bear grandkids. To take care of them when they got old. To fix all their problems, and the list continues.
Often times, it felt as though I was all they had, and that their happiness depended on me living out their dreams. I see how this philosophy has carried over to other areas of my life—this pressure to be the one who makes everything better. As I continue to witness my family opt for survival rather than justice and liberation, I feel many complex emotions. But the ones that stick out the most are anger and shame. My long time narrative has been “Well if I am the only one who is aware of it, then I should do something about it.”
But is that true?
And now that I’ve made space to ask the question, the answer is a resounding NO.
I will not make any waves by exhausting myself into the belief that a responsibility so big lies only on me, and furthermore, that I must change everything all at once.
However, I am determined to uncover the roots of my reluctance to speak up within my family. I would like to lean more into viewing my self-awareness as a gift, extend compassion to my resistant self, and aim to reshape my inner dialogue. I trust that this inner work will fuel my aspiration to muster the courage for more impactful connections with a wider audience.
But as for now, I will focus on you—dear reader and fellow human. If you’ve gotten this far, I trust that it’s because you value my words and are on a similar journey as mine. My questions to you are the following:
How has unlearning and reckoning with colonization, occupation, genocide and capitalism been looking like for you?
What spaces have you felt safe enough to raise your voice in?
Who else do you hope to reach one day?
How can you strive for that and still acknowledge how far you’ve already come?
What are your gifts? How do you leverage these gifts to uplift the people of Palestine and others around the world who lack access to the same privileges as you?
How can you continue to keep that fire in your heart alive and not let the grief take you away from the vision of a free Palestine?
I saw a post on IG where a user reiterated a sentence that someone commented in one of their post. It read:
“Imagine if in ten years Israel begins a holiday based on the events happening now. Imagine if they celebrated their “success” of harming thousands of people with a federally recognized feast. That’s your Thanksgiving.”
Yikes.
Let’s sit on this—together—as I’m still trying to wrap my head around the painful truth of this message and figure out how to alter my own actions.
I don’t have all the answers. But I think curiosity and accountability is a great place to start.
If we can begin here, imagine where we could be by next year?
Val