I had been feeling somewhat out of sorts lately. I'm sure that having missed numerous F2F Saturday morning meetings (due to back-to-back-to-back weekend trips out of town) was a major contributor to those feelings. "Use it or lose it" holds true in recovery as it does in anything else.

In short, I was dreading spending Thanksgiving with my family of origin. Perhaps a great deal of that dread was in reality a good thing, because lately I had been doing some significant uncovering work - stripping away the veneer of denial (more on this later) and getting in touch with real childhood circumstances and the real feelings that resulted.

Because our plans for the holiday included beginning to clear out the junk in my father's barn (he was something of a hoarder), my wife and I made the 2.5 hour drive in separate vehicles, me in the pickup truck and her in her van. The time alone on the drive up gave me an opportunity to do something I hadn't done in a good while (and thank you, Oneness, for reminding me of the need): I worked a mental gratitude list.

From the many people who love me for who I am, including my family of choice (wife, stepchildren, all that extended family), to my recovery family - both here in Sanctuary and my amazing Al-Anon F2F group, to still having a job, to our peaceful home in the woods, to the beauty of this good earth, an on and on...I was blissfully reminded of how my HP backs up a dump truck full of blessings for me each and every day, and loves me and cares for me no matter what.

What an appropriate response for Thanksgiving Day.

Anyway, that girded my strength sufficiently for spending a couple of days with my FOO. A couple of insights from the family meal:

First one was that I was asked to give the prayer of blessing, and after having such a wonderful time with my gratitude list on the way up, it was easy for me to ask HP to remind us of all that we do have and to help us ignore the world's constant barrage of messages that shout at us to focus on the things we don't have.

The other insight is more telling, and only came to light because my wife took notice of it. My father died in February, and yet no mention was made of the empty chair at the table. No feelings - good, bad or indifferent - were brought up or discussed. As she was sharing this observation with me later, the insight hit me with stunning clarity: Denial has always been a core operating principle in my family. Pretend everything is OK and just keep moving. "Nothing to see here, move along." Our family dealt with feelings by not dealing with them. This is some key information that I'm still working to integrate. Having never learned to deal with my feelings in healthy and appropriate ways makes me appreciate all the more that I am now learning to do so in the rooms of recovery. I find it especially curious that it took a relative newcomer to the family to even recognize this - that for myself and everyone else, the dance of denial just came naturally.

Fortunately, the lingering effects from the weekend seem to be limited to the physical: we breathed way too much decades-old dust in that old barn and I'm still enjoying the upper-respiratory fun from that. Note to self: next time, bring dust masks!