Thanksgiving in the Quiet: A Harvest of My Own Making

November 2025

Today I’m sitting in the quiet, the way I do every Thanksgiving now. No table full of relatives, no forced rituals, no old scripts replaying themselves across the room. Just me, my work, the soft flicker of a candle, and a kind of peace I fought decades to earn.

I used to spend these holidays wrapped in guilt. I sat at tables with people who caused me pain, pretending everything was fine because that was the rule: don’t disrupt the illusion, don’t name the wound, don’t break the spell.

For years I swallowed the truth to keep everyone else comfortable. For years I carried anger in my bones like a secret fire. For years I performed the version of myself they preferred, while the real me simmered quietly under the surface.

Breaking from that cycle wasn’t a clean cut — it was an exorcism. A long, painful unwinding of trauma, obligation, and emotional falsehoods. Holidays were the hardest to let go of, because they were where the performance was most demanded.

But I did let go. I stepped back. And somewhere in the solitude that followed, I found something I had never known:

my own resonance.

Now my holidays are quiet not because I have no one, but because I refuse to sit at tables where my presence is conditional and my truth is inconvenient.

I don’t put myself anywhere I don’t fully belong. I no longer bargain with my peace. I don’t give my energy away to be tolerated. I let the old patterns die the way autumn leaves do —not with rage, but with release.

And in that release, I discovered something beautiful:

I am not lonely. I am free.

Yes, I want a co-creator — someone who meets me with depth, clarity, and presence. Someone who can share art, seasons, and sacred work. Someone who adds to the field, not drains it.

But I don’t want someone to fill a void. There is no void. There is only spaciousness.

And in that space, I have created worlds.

A Harvest Season of Becoming

This cycle’s work, The Alchemist’s Harvest, holds all of this transmutation. It’s not just a zine — it’s a map of how I turned a lifetime of difficult seasons into gold.

Inside it are the rituals, the sigils, the tarot, the bottle artifact, the character of Draveena who walked with me through the Furnace, the lessons AnnaBella learned about discernment and truth, the scents and stones that grounded me, and the handmade baubles that grew from my hands like small miracles.

Every piece of it reflects the same core truth I’m honoring today: I do not abandon myself anymore.

I have taken illusions and broken them. I have taken trauma and composted it. I have taken loneliness and turned it into sovereignty. I have taken silence and turned it into story. I have taken pain and turned it into art.

This is my harvest.

Looking Ahead: The Reunion Tree & The Winter Issue

As I close this cycle, I’m beginning work on the holiday issue featuring my Red and White Reunion Tree — a piece about return, renewal, and the weaving together of what remains sacred after everything else falls away.

It’s a different kind of magic. Softer. Brighter. A winter hearth after a long descent.

I’ll share the creation process in my video diary on TikTok — the making, the crafting, the behind-the-scenes glimpses of how these worlds come alive. For anyone who walks this journey with me, those videos are little lanterns in the dark.

Gratitude for Strength, Not Circumstance

So today, on Thanksgiving, my gratitude isn’t for a table full of people. It’s for the strength to walk away from the tables that hurt me. It’s for the clarity that solitude can be sanctuary. It’s for the peace that comes from living in resonance with myself. It’s for the work I’ve done, the art I’ve created, the worlds I’m building.

I am grateful for the woman who refused to keep pretending. I’m grateful for the inner fire that never went out, even when I felt alone. I’m grateful for the path I carved with my own hands, and for the cycles that taught me how to rise again and again.

Most of all, I’m grateful for this truth:

I am not alone because I lack people. I am alone because I choose myself. And there is power in that choice. There is peace in that choice. There is gold in that choice.

Happy Thanksgiving — from the quiet, the sacred, and the utterly unbroken place I now call home.