I can’t believe it is already the end of November, this year has been a blur for me in so many ways.

This Thanksgiving is going to be a different one for me, the first one in 18 years that I’m not celebrating with my now ex-husband. And I’m not going to lie, that sentence stung a little to write. I wondered earlier this year, when I was still processing my divorce, how I’d feel about the holiday season.

But you know what? I’m OK.

Really.

This year it’s just me and my mom celebrating together, so we decided to forgo the Thanksgiving meal I usually make to order some Honeybaked smoked turkey and go to the Georgia Aquarium. I’m excited — as much as I love a project meal it’s nice to just leave it be and go have an experience instead.

I really expected to feel more anxiety about this holiday season, as it is my first post-divorce. I don’t have children so thankfully that’s a navigational situation I can avoid but I do live alone, and I was afraid that I’d feel alone and depressed this holiday season but so far that hasn’t hit me.

I don’t flatter myself to think I’m the only person facing this holiday season without someone important to them. If you are in the same boat I am so sorry for your loss, due to whatever circumstances brought it about. I know it’s hard, it’s not what you planned, and it’s perfectly OK to not be OK. I promise.

While I would never tell someone who is suffering to just “be thankful”, I’ve been thinking a lot about Isaac Saul’s Thanksgiving post on gratitude. Maybe I’ll make that a New Years’ resolution, to start keeping a gratitude journal. When you do what I do it gets hard to remember the good stuff, perhaps it would be good for me to sit down and write about it on a daily basis.

And I do have good stuff going on. I have one project on the horizon that I’m extremely excited about and fates willing I’ll have another. I still haven’t a damn clue what I’m doing with my life but I have a better idea of what I want to be doing.

Despite everything, I feel thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving. No, Really.

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