How to Not Be Consumed at Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is right around the corner. It can be a day of tradition, family, and connection. It can also bring tension, exhaustion, grief, or even trigger old wounds. 

Today, Dan and Rachael reflect on the complex reality of the holiday: the joy, the nostalgia, the chaos, and the moments that can leave us feeling overwhelmed or even “devoured” by family dynamics.

Drawing on their own stories and looking ahead to this year’s holiday, they explore how to hold gratitude alongside grief, and how to create meaningful connection without losing yourself. 

Whether you’re hosting, traveling, or creating a quiet space for yourself, this conversation offers gentle guidance and practical tools. You’ll learn how to approach Thanksgiving with intention, better honor your boundaries, and participate with a heart that’s more open to the day, however it unfolds.

Episode Transcript

Dan: Thanksgiving, Rachael, Thanksgiving to you dear friend.

Rachael: So not Happy Thanksgiving. Just Thanksgiving. I like it.

Dan: We might just stop here because what we have begun with really is sort of the core of what we’re getting to, and that is how do we make sure we don’t become the Turkey at our own Thanksgiving meal? How do we not get devoured, eaten in many ways, disappointed in the context of a day that just because of the intensity of the importance of the day, I think draws out not just individual, but corporate, cultural, familial craziness. I don’t know about you, but I’m just speaking about my family and I love my family and I love every person who will be at our table. I just think it’s a crazy day. How about you?

Rachael: Yeah, I mean, in this particular season of my life, Thanksgiving has not looked the same at all the past six years. It’s looked different every year. And a part of that is I got married and so before it just was like I had my family and that was going to be a given us to what I did. I’m also a stepparent to beautiful boys who go between homes on holidays and switch up every year. So I think if you had asked me seven years ago when Thanksgiving had a very familiar flow, and I’d probably have different answer for you, but in some ways it feels a little bit of almost like a displacement, which is tricky to say in a time in our world where there are people literally displaced from homes and when it’s a holiday that’s meant to be celebrating kind of a false story that we kind of erased displacement of an entire people group. So I’m just saying that word and being like, oh my gosh, okay, I need to be careful what I’m saying. But yeah, it’s a holiday that’s hard to land on. But historically, Thanksgiving for me was a really fun holiday of getting to be with my big Italian family and all my cousins and all my aunts and uncles and yeah, all the football on the tv, food desserts. But for the most part, as a kid it meant usually in Oklahoma for the most part, Thanksgiving, the weather was still somewhat okay to be outside playing and we just played backyard football for hours. I have enough cousins that we could have two teams.

Dan: I just have to ask, how competitive were you in that process?

Rachael: Oh my gosh. I’m the oldest granddaughter. I have one male cousin who’s older than me and very competitive, usually the other team captain. And I could have fun, but I wanted to win. Yeah, very competitive. There’s no chill.

Dan: It sounds delightful. Literally thick, rich, sweet, complex, family, outdoors, games, distractions. We’ll come to this question later, but how thanks-giving was Thanksgiving?

Rachael: As far as it’s a day…

Dan: Giving thanks?

Rachael: …where we’re expressing gratitude? I think certainly there was always a prayer or some anticipation of as we sit down for the meal, certainly I would say a lot of gratitude expressed for family and the richness of this big, I mean, my mom’s one of nine, so when you have, I’m thinking about my grandparents having nine children with their spouses and all the grandkids, we would actually, because before there were like 18 grandkids, we would try to fit everyone in their living room, so we would move all the furniture, make a huge table. So there was certainly this kind of anticipated expression of gratitude for the kind of rich blessings of family. But as far as me thinking of that day as a day where my heart is oriented towards giving thanks, no, I think it was oriented towards fights with my cousins and eating lots of really good food and watching football, playing football, enjoying, I would certainly say the chaos of that many people in relationship all together in a space. There was certainly tense moments and loud conversations and lots of relational dynamics. So yeah, I would not say it was necessarily, and the older I got and in our very patriarchal structure, it became clear I needed to be helping in certain ways. It became an actually pretty exhausting day. You do a lot of work to set things up and you eat very quickly so that you could put everything away.

Dan: I do. I think it is a day of exhaustion for a lot of people and particularly, and again, studies have shown this, that women end up doing 75% of the so-called work to create kitchen process, clean up and engagement. So in a typical patriarchal world, men are watching football, maybe one unique woman has joined them, but for the most part, women have prepared the meal. Women are cleaning up from the meal, and again, that’s overstatement. There are plenty of homes where some of the men do the cooking and certainly I know I spent a lot of time cleaning up over many decades from Thanksgiving. But when I think about it, for me, it was the one meal every year that had a goodness that no other meal had. And I think from looking at my own story dinners generally with my father working all night long, he was hardly there. So my mother and I ate Swanson TV dinners a lot, or the food she did cook was, it was kindly put reprehensible, but this was the one meal that my grandmother who had severe arthritis somehow drew her body into a process along with my father who was a stunning chef, cook, baker. So it was the one meal every year that in one sense I look forward to, but almost hated because it reminded me, Swanson’s were not that we’re good of a TV dinner. So I always had a sense of we would travel to my grandmother’s house, we would begin a process of creating, I remember smells more than anything, the atmosphere of delicious, compelling, gorgeous food being anticipated. So for me, Thanksgiving has this deep, deep sense of joy, of anticipation and then so much sorrow, so much grief. I can also say that as an academic it usually meant grading and a long process of getting to Thanksgiving, exhausted Thanksgiving period grading in order to be able to get things back before the semester ends. So I know the word’s going to come up, people can expect it. It’s the “a” word. I feel so ambivalent about the holiday, yet I can’t escape the nostalgia of what it was, what it’s meant to be. And indeed it is without a question, picture of what the banquet in the new heavens and earth is at least meant to be a small hor d’oeuvre of. So I think in that it’s got a lot of setup to eat you if it’s not at least named. So I’m curious how you name in some sense, the hungry ghosts that sit at the table for you as you go, as you start thinking about preparing, eating, moving to whatever structure you have for Thanksgiving.

Rachael: Yeah, well, as I mentioned this next week, our kiddos will be with their mom. And so in some ways there’s some very literal hungry ghosts of a day that you just, so many people assume you’re gathered with your family we’ll be without a core part of our family, like our immediate little family. But I think that sense of nostalgia that you’re talking about is also such a setup for hungry ghosts for my family, my larger family, my parents have actually been hosting Thanksgiving for the past several years, and that was a big shift when we moved from my grandparents’ house to other people’s houses. And my grandmother passed away a year, a little over a year ago. This would be the second Thanksgiving without her. So in some ways there is a lot of loss in the space of trying to create new ways of being together with kind of out, my grandfather passed away almost a decade ago, no, two decades, almost two decades ago. So we’ve kind of had to figure that out. So I do think just some of that longing of we had such rich traditions and in some ways when you try to hold on to traditions that lose their heart, sometimes they feel… so trying to create something new that can honor that thing, that this is a new era and that there’s still desire to gather and be together and it’s different and it feels different. So I find without a capacity to actually make space for some sorrow to be present in the midst of and longing, and that’s kind of a paradox, to let longing be present on a day where there’s a lot of indulgence of our bodies in delicious good food and connection. And sometimes that catches me off guard with a holiday like Thanksgiving. I do love the coziness of it. Some people dress up for Thanksgiving and I am full on if we’re eating all this food, I’m wearing sweatpants, if we’re watching football, if I’m going to be outside, this is not a day where I’m dressing nice, but that even is a little bit of a defiant countercultural movement on my part. But yeah, I think when you’re talking about ambivalence, I think it is a day that how do you set a table like that without there being some exhaustion? There’s no way around it. How do you gather in ways that will highlight the losses in your gathering and still bring gratitude and make space for something new? So that’s what I think about.

Dan: To follow that up. What I’ve had to do and what I will do is before I sit at our meal, I will go through the people who are there that nobody knows, my grandmother, my father, my mother, and a number of other friends who from the past made Thanksgiving, really a stunning and really important day for us. And it’s just important for me because as much as my family knows I’m a storyteller, they actually don’t really want to hear about my grandmother again and they don’t want hear about eating Swanson dinners. But it’s almost like in order to be at the table, I’ve got to be able to tell someone what I’m bringing to be at the table with ghosts or others around the table that nobody sees. And I’m grateful that my beloved wife, we can be with shorthand about some of the stories that she’s already heard me tell about the nature of the Thanksgiving that my father took me out into the woods to share the birds and bees with me at Thanksgiving.

Rachael: Oh no.

Dan: And let me just tell you

Rachael: Why Thanksgiving?

Dan: It didn’t go well. We won’t go into specifics, but we were both carrying shotguns.

Rachael: Oh no.

Dan: So just to say there are stories I need to engage in order to be at the table with the ghosts being okay, not having to feed them, not having to resolve them, but to be able to go, there’s more people at the table than you’ll be able to see. Have you collected and allowed yourself to recollect that in a way in which the nostalgia is held with goodness, some level of sorrow, lament, play, humor so that it doesn’t intrude with the others who are at the table, which is a whole nother question, who gets invited to your table to be at the table? And I know for a lot of people, that’s family. And then when you’ve got family, especially in a polarized era, this is for many people a platform for gratitude being expressed in ways that are assaultive to others at the table. The relative who says, I thank God that we have a president who’s wise and strong, and then the next person saying, I’m so grateful that I’m not currently in a gulag as I expect to be by next Thanksgiving. In other words, this is not the context for families to go to war, but often at least I hear from good friends, it’s a war zone. And I think that’s part of the dilemma for how do you avoid getting devoured in a context where you know, some of his tensions not just politically, but just the tensions of life show up in a dramatic way at the stage of this event called Thanksgiving.

Rachael: I think about the, I mean, how many years now that we’ve been doing our training program, our level one training and Narrative Focused Trauma Care level one training.

Dan: I think it’s about 200 years.

Rachael: It feels like 200 dog years, over a decade. And we often have a training that happens right before Thanksgiving, and it’s usually our weekend that’s on attachment and cultural context and family of origin. And you have so wisely many times over said, next week is not the playground for you to start entering some of these stories. And I think in a world where social media is kind of setting up for us, there is an urgency to everything. And please hear me, times are urgent right now, but the ways in which we choose to go about honoring the truth, stepping in deeper relationally, the Thanksgiving table is likely not going to be the space. Does that mean we let things fly without voicing “That is not okay and I’m not okay with that.” No. It’s just that you’re not actually going to accomplish what your heart most longs to accomplish at that big of a stage. And when people are exhausted, when there is a setup for disappointment, when there is almost an enticement towards conflict, that’s another kind of indulgence. Maybe I’m just speaking to myself here, when there’s a setup or an invitation to take the bait into something that your heart actually longs to engage and you have other opportunities to engage, but you think that moment with everyone is going to lead to the kind of transformative repentance and connection and intimacy that you most long for, rarely, that’s not going to happen at the table on Thanksgiving day. Does that mean it can’t happen in conversations playing out around and in the midst? Absolutely. But it’s just, again, what we’re talking about, people are bringing a lot of things into this space. Yeah. So that’s where my heart goes.

Dan: Think about the dinner table. It’s like a stage and depending on do you create meaning at the table. If you pray and then you start eating, do you create meaning by inviting people, everyone at the table to do something as obvious as how are you thankful? I think that’s a good tactic, but it also sets people up even if they know you’re going to do it. And you’ve got people who love to talk, you have people who don’t want to share, and then you’ve got people who are going to be just funny. And then you’ve got other people who are deeply emotional. And so you’ve got the drama, the craziness of your family and each person in it playing out on the stage. I don’t have an answer for you as to here’s what to do to not get devoured, but I can tell you that I set up for our table the fact that we are not going to spend the entire time in light chatter about who the heck knows. I really want to know how have you suffered and what has it brought you into an awareness of that you can speak to with regard to thanksgiving? Now I can tell you that every time…

Rachael: How does that go?

Dan: Everyone’s pissed, everyone’s groaning. Oh, dad’s starting with lament again. And it’s like, yeah, this is a family tradition. Hate me for it. But until we’ve at least begun to go, because I know the people at the table well enough to know that all of us have suffered and some so egregiously some in one sense without a whole lot effect. Nonetheless, to be able to set that context, that suffering is not antithetical to having a heart that’s able to say thank you, thank you, thank you. So instead of just asking, what are you thankful for? Which I frankly hate that question because what it sets up is I think some of the tritest conversations on the face of the earth, I’m thankful that my family loves me. And it’s like, yeah, you should be given how you’ve engaged. But by setting the context in the interplay of lament, grief, sorrow, struggle, who has not had struggle in the context of this year, and if you asked all my children, my in-laws, all the people who may at one point or time inhabit our table, they’d be listening to this podcast going, oh God, he’s going to do it again. He’s promising it’s going to happen again, but not everyone. But more often than not, before the night is over, I’ll have at least one or two people say thanks. I really appreciated having the opportunity to say, I don’t know if I’ve got a lot of Thanksgiving given what I’ve suffered, but at least puts me in the position of asking that question, how about for you and your table?

Rachael: I’m like, I think I have such a big family. I’ve never had an experience at Thanksgiving where people, it’s like an open mic because it’s just too many people. It’s just too many people. However, this particular year we’re staying put and just trying to make a table for those who don’t have a place to go or want to gather with more people but maybe can’t make it to family. And so I actually love that question and maybe it’s something that we’ll play with because I do think it’s a really powerful thing to have a moment of reflection. And I do think it’s important to do the labor around what is it that we’re grateful for that moves beyond platitudes or privilege, I guess I would say in my own world, the spaces where it’s kind of easy to be grateful for all the things that are going well, but what does it mean to have a heart of gratitude not in, because again, the spiritual abuse part of me is I think people could be hearing the God is good all the time. God is good, and the way I make meaning of my suffering is like there’s got to be some reason God has me suffering like this. And I don’t hear you inviting that at all. I think I want to just speak to the people that find themselves, well, that sounds like an awful Thanksgiving. It’s like, yeah, that should feel like an awful Thanksgiving. So not what we’re saying. I think in some ways there is a humility that comes from locating our gratitude in the midst of the places that we would say, yeah, I’m not grateful for this. And I don’t think the invitation is to find a way to be grateful for that, but to have anchors and tethers to things that we can say, Thank you. I think back to seasons where, yeah, the suffering was so profound, but what I could say thank you for was that I did not feel alone in the suffering. Or again, I’m just so yeah, I think this is kind of causing me to pause a little bit and think about what could be meaningful connection around the table. So.

Dan: Well, I’ll tell you another tactic I have for our coming Thanksgiving. It comes out of Ephesians five, and just taking from verse 19, second part, “Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. I mean, there’s so many passages on Thanksgiving literally through the Hebrew Bible into the New Testament, but that’s been pretty significant for me. I was in the hospital not long ago, I had surgery called Terp, but basically it’s a Roto-Rootering of your prostate. So that, again, too much information. But so as an older man, I don’t have to be up seven, eight times a night. So I had surgery and it’s supposed to be a pretty simple process, but it ended up with a lot of physical agony. And so I ended up having to be several times in the emergency room getting a catheter to relieve, shall we just put it in broad stroke terms, urinary hell. And during the process of literally feeling like, I know I’m not dying, but I want to die, I do not want this kind of physical pain. We’ve done enough podcasts that I know how to work with my Vagal system. And so one of the things I began to do was hum and humming. Look, if I had a voice, I would sing it. It’s one of the things I feel so assured about for the new heavens and earth, I will have a beautiful singing voice, but until then, the cacophony I create when I try to sing is just too disruptive. I was singing a little bit in the emergency room, Becky just started laughing. It was like, I need to start humming. So what did I hum? I was in so much pain, all I could hum was “Jesus loves me, this I know,” and I must have hummed and spoken sung that sub vocally, I don’t know, no exaggeration to say a hundred times. And did it help? Well, I mean I eventually got to the point I could do podcast. So all to say there’s something about music, there’s something that changes the amygdala in the context of music, whether you are hearing it even better if you can participate. So one of the things I plan to do for this Thanksgiving, and I don’t have any concern that the people at my table, we’ll listen to this podcast. I want them to pick a song that has meant something to them in some of the sweet or some the deep struggles of their year so that we can hear the music that’s moved you and I will have that song because it got me through a really hard night. So how we come to not just speak about Thanksgiving, but how we participate with one another in that process. And music is one of the sweetest. So yes, the games are going to be on. Yes, there will be distractions from the kitchen and questions who will clean up, but you can create something more. Now, I do think because it’ll be disruptive if you’ve not done that before, your family will not be appreciative usually. But I think at least what it says is I will not let this remarkable opportunity that we culturally have pinned to this particular day to go without my engagement. And I think that’s where I want to underscore, how do you keep from being devoured through defiance, through a holy defiance that are you entering into this particular meal/day with a sense of gratitude even for what the year has brought you? What struggle, suffering? Is there something you can look to? And for me, I go back to when I was in the hospital, Jack, the nurse, heavily tatted man even on his skull, and he was so cool, kind, engaged… in absolute agony he got me laughing. And in the process in’s back to this simple phrase, human kindness is maybe one of the most powerful gifts to give and to receive. And so that question of how do we participate in creating a day where grief can be honored, where you don’t have to have platitudes, but yet the raw reality that there is something in you that has grown in the midst of what you have become this year, and can you offer that part of you and the others in the room a kindness that begins to transform what the day holds? Thoughts?

Rachael: Well, I’m probably feeling convicted by your question in some ways because I think some of the ways that when there’s just so much going on, and like I was saying, I think for me in the past six years, Thanksgiving, I have gotten to go back to my family for a couple of Thanksgivings. We’ve gotten to spend a Thanksgiving with Michael’s family that was very sweet. We’ve had a couple here in Philly where it’s more of a Friendsgiving or even just something really quiet in our home. But I don’t know if I’m always thinking about what does it mean to be defiantly kind in midst of the day? I think I am more tending to like, oh, how can distraction kind of be nice? Or I get overstimulated sometimes by all that’s going on, and how can I just kind of like, well, it just is what it is. I don’t have to stay very connected or present or I feel my own justice oriented convictions about a day Thanksgiving in our larger cultural story. And so I guess I’m finding your invitation toward this honoring of lament, engaging the ambivalence and trusting that kindness can be incredibly disruptive is kind of helping me to a kind of imagination of the day that feels like it could be a lot more rich, a lot more meaningful, a lot more full of integrity and honor in the sense of I don’t have to leave huge parts of myself at the door, which again sounds so dramatic when we’re just talking about this fun holiday that we have. They say in airports, Thanksgiving and Easter tend to be much more travel holidays even than Christmas or New Year. And so we know it’s a day when many people are traveling, and I don’t hear you saying, you’re saying we’re establishing traditions. I ask people this question, there’s nothing wrong with savoring the nostalgia of Thanksgiving’s past. I just think, yeah, there is something in me that longs for a nourishing meal in the connections I have in the conversations, conversations in how my heart could express something. And so yeah, I think it’s actually I’m feeling some conviction around what could be possible.

Dan: Well, I think about, I don’t watch the series. I’ve only watched a few of the episodes and I don’t know if I have the exact one, so don’t hold me to this. It’s like when I say, I know it’s in Ephesians, but I think it’s chapter four, but it could be whatever, but it’s the series called The Bear, Season two, and it’s either episode six or seven, but it’s a gathering. I don’t think it’s Thanksgiving, I think it’s Christmas, and it’s I think one of the most horrifying hour long shows I’ve ever watched. Now, Sam Lee, our dear friend and colleague, said to me, I don’t care if you watch the whole series, you got to watch this episode. And I’m like, why? And he said, I think it’s important for you to see this before we engage in our NFTC November event so that you get the feel for what people are having to metabolize as to a lot of people go into this holiday with trauma, major trauma over the experience of what Thanksgiving has held or what high holidays hold for people. And I’m like, I just could see in his eye I love the man, but I could see in his eye it’s like, is that it? He goes, no, I think it’ll help you get closer to your own life. And I’m like, fire upon you, dear friend, as if I need more opportunity. So I did watch it and let me tell you, it is staggering the brilliance of this busy kitchen just you can imagine The Bear is about a family of restauranters. So what the meal is going to be is beyond exquisite. Yet what devolves are the level of family tensions that I won’t give the dénouement of the episode, but let me just say it’s catastrophic and did it trigger, it wasn’t anything close to my Thanksgivings, nothing close, but it was very close to what it was like to live in my family. So in that sense, Thanksgiving was this nostalgic, almost isolated event of just goodness in a life where food was often a war zone and the family tensions, even if we’re a very small family, were at play. So when we begin to invite people into this, I don’t think it would be kind to not say that for some people going to a family meal knowing that you will be the turkey, you will be devoured, and those of you who know your own story well enough to know that you will be made the point of the day and your political or your spiritual or your philosophical or whatever views you hold are so antithetical to the context that you’ll be in. The question of what do you want to say given so much of your brilliant work with spiritual abuse, what do you say to that person who knows that they are likely walking into more than just a kind of mild war zone, but into a true war?

Rachael: Well, on one hand I want to say, is it wise and kind to continue going? There’s a part of that there, but if there’s not ongoing structures of harm that you feel like would warrant that stark of a boundary, I think back to something you’ve said to me before, do you actually have permission to in some ways, well, it’s hard. Where are you at? Like if I say, do you have permission to not be consumed? Then I know from your stories, even a movement to disrupt the system could bring greater violence. That’s this whole scene in the Bear that you’re talking about.

Dan: Absolutely. And again, we’re not trying to resolve it.

Rachael: I don’t know. I think a part of me says, I think there have to be really wise ways in which you protect yourself in which you have an awareness of what you’ll be invited into. And if you choose disruption, what will come. And I still think you should choose disruption. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. I still think you don’t have to be consumed. I still think you don’t have to be at the mercy of a system, but to know that if you step out of a role or you don’t play the family games, so to speak, there is a cost to pay. But sometimes that suffering is still what we would choose over having to betray ourselves or leave ourselves. So I feel really, this question feels really hard to me, and I feel like deep compassion. So I don’t know if you had a direction you are wanting to go there that I’m not getting close to, but…

Dan: I think the word for me would be the word safety before disruption, choose safety, but sometimes safety and the choice of it is incredibly disruptive. To be at a meal, and I’m just imagining something of a worst case scenario. You become the brunt of cruel humor. Oh, it’s just joking. You take a joke. That kind of cruelty that also blames you for having the response of being human. Those are the contexts that I think what generally happens is you either endure it and then hate yourself for having suffered it, or you get caught in the wave of provocation, you know they’re provoking you, you know they’re attempting to get you to raise your voice, get more intense, step into the drama and join them in this in some sense, orgy of despair. I think that’s where you need a plan. You can’t go in without some clarity that uncle so-and-so your mother, your brother is going to do X, Y, and Z because they’ve done it a thousand times before. Like a good standup comedian, you need to know what your lines are when you get heckled, and you should not be there without some preparatory process of when this comes up, when this story gets told, don’t try to handle this d, out of the blue, spontaneously have a response, and in that, you’re going to feel a little bit safer in that. But when you give a response that is kind, but not joining the drama of provocation, but also chooses to have a boundary that’s clearer enough on your own behalf that you’re not getting caught in the morass, I think at that point people are going to be pissed and they’re going to up the ante. If you don’t play the game, they’re going to continue. It’s at that point, where is it within you that’s well enough to be able to say, gosh, I seem to be the basis of so much intensity right now. I hate to ruin the meal for you all. So I think I’m going to step out. I’ve got some good friends that have invited me, so I will be doing dessert with them. Thank you so much for the meal. We’ll see you soon and you’re gone. So the ability to have an exit strategy, how are you going to engage the provocations and the assaults? How are you going to manage where the line is, where you simply know staying is in some sense submission to cruelty. Again, I hope this is only for a few of our listeners, but for those it is honorable to have an exit strategy. I’ve often said to people, even in my own family, there are just times things get rolling and I know it’s not going to go well if I engage the bathroom. Yeah, the toilet is a place that culturally we don’t invade. Usually we don’t knock on the door of when someone’s there. So I’ve often chosen a momentary exit strategy by going to the bathroom, even if I don’t need to go to just get my vagal system back in operation to find myself back to this is who I want to be, this is how I want to engage. And I think that process leaves us literally able to say, may it be a great Thanksgiving, Rachael.

Rachael: To you as well, Dan.