(photo courtesy of Extro Vision)

If you have been following this blog, you may remember a post I put up about the conflict (drama) in our family about how we were going to celebrate Thanksgiving as a family:

We’re Not a Sit-Com Family... (despite how perfect you want us to be) (publish0x.com)

So, how did our holiday celebration turn out? It was wonderful, and better than I could have imagined. I think The Rolling Stones knew what they were talking about when they released "You Can't Always Get What You Want." They were dead on with "Sometimes you get what you need."

If you recall, I had set boundaries with the relative hosting our Thanksgiving dinner so that the children and us could enjoy the meal, and those boundaries were respected and kept. The dinner happened at the agreed-upon time so there weren't hangry, whining children bored out of their minds waiting endlessly for dinner to commence. 

The original plan had been to eat on the screened-in porch at tables pushed together. Well, the weather was far cooler than we expected so that plan was nixed. Now we had 12 people eating dinner and a table that sat six people.  

In the previous post, I mentioned that my daughter-in-law and I had discussed us having a separate meal with just our family and joining everyone else for dessert with the children. The relative who ended up hosting strongly rejected this because of how it would appear to our new-found cousins. The irony of our meal was that my children, grandchildren, and I ended up eating separately from everyone else in the living room while the others sat at the table. So, we did have our little separate family gathering where we could interact with the children without interrupting adult conversation.  I just had to laugh at this outcome because I really got what I wanted, something easy for the grandkids, and didn't have to wash a bunch of dishes, pots and pans because I hosted. How lovely was that!

There was a lot of adult conversation going on at the table, and rightfully so. My husband's family had lost contact with this part of their family for at least 40 years. The cousins were so happy to have this familial connection again as were we. It seems that they have something in common with everyone. There was an instant rapport, which at our old age, is really tough to achieve as us older folks tend to get stuck in our ways. 

All in all, I have nothing but good things to say about our gathering, great memories I will cherish, and new family members that I hope will be a part of our lives. 

As I was sitting there, with a plate full of spoonsful of this and that, trying not to think about dieting that day (I really didn't think about my diet because, TURKEY!), it occurred to me that I spent a lot of time before the holiday overthinking our Thanksgiving situation. I also manifested a lot of unnecessary resentment and angst about what COULD go wrong because someone else was trying to control my environment. I remember thinking, "we really didn't have to go through all this conflict when a simple 'could you please plan dinner so the kids won't be cranky' comment would have sufficed."  Instead, I participated in turning it into drama that was unnecessary, making things harder on myself than it really had to be.

Were there lessons learned? Absolutely. I stand by my original post a few weeks ago about not changing who I am because of how it may look to others. I will not 'perform' for the benefit of others. It's not healthy for me. I don't think it's healthy for anyone to hide their authentic self to make someone else happy. We have a generation of people who have lived in the closet that will attest to that.

However, I need to learn that even though I am the daughter of a carpenter and custom cabinet maker, every bump in the road is not a nail to be hammered by me. It can be a gentle puff of air to clear the sawdust. I should stop assuming that conflict, no matter how insignificant, is the start of major drama that I need to address in a big way. This was a hard reality for me to see because I contributed to creating more stress for myself than the situation actually warranted.  I also found myself fighting snacking impulses up until Thanksgiving.  I caved once with pretzel knobs filled with peanut butter. Yes, I felt horrible after that.....

Once we start treating every situation with conflict that will morph into dramatic situations, I think we end up with a stream of constant drama in our lives, which causes us unnecessary stress. When we get to this point, we will look for coping mechanisms for the constant stress, and some of us use food and drink to cope, which is probably one of the reasons we became overweight.   

Going forward, I'm going to try to not make potential conflict into actual conflict, unless it's unavoidable. Conflict can have a life of its own and can do that without my help. 

Sometimes this self-actualization sucks and sometimes it doesn't.  Thanksgiving was definitely an eye-opener for me this year. 

I want you to know I'm humbled that you read my posts. I'm thankful to have this opportunity to share my struggles with weight in the hopes that you will benefit from what I have learned. I'm thankful for this platform.  I'm thankful for all the supportive, encouraging words of wisdom I've received from my husband. I'm thankful for the less-than-perfect but wonderful extended family that I have.

I'm not going to post too much about sticking to a diet in the next month or so because we are in the full-blown holiday season. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, holiday gatherings happen, and food and holiday drinks are usually in abundance. The food offerings are usually filled with fat and sugar. The festive drinks are also full of sugar (I had two sugar cookie martinis on Thanksgiving). If you are dieting, please don't avoid these gatherings or opportunities to connect with family and friends for the sake of a diet. Embrace these times, mitigate your food and drink intake where you can by making little changes, and don't obsess over your weight because we will do that together once the holidays are over. Please know I'm right there with you and I have a left-over pumpkin dump cake and angel food cake apple cobbler in the fridge, neither of which my husband will eat (yeah, I could just throw them away).

Let's try to minimize the drama in our lives for the rest of the year. I'm hanging up my hammer... for now.....