Jay here!

In a previous post, Thanksgiving Alone at Home, we said that we sometimes change our minds about what we want to do on a certain holiday. Well, we changed our minds about what we wanted to do yesterday, and it was GLORIOUS!

Thanksgiving has been an ever-evolving holiday for us.

After we went plant-based, we would spend all day in the kitchen making a feast for ourselves. We made vegan versions of all our favorite foods and lined them up on the counters and table. There was enough food to feed ten horses, but all of it was just for these two little five foot tall girls to snack on throughout the day.

That worked for us for a while. Some of my best memories of my childhood are making food with my parents (ESPECIALLY my mom’s pumpkin roll, where she would eat the frosting with me :o). Yet, as my mom and I evolved, we got tired of spending our entire day in the kitchen. As our wellness journey grew, we realized we don’t enjoy eating too much and then feeling bloated and gassy, as many Americans are on Thanksgiving.

We needed a new tradition, something to fit with our lives now.

And then it clicked.

Let’s put up our Christmas trees!

For the record, it took a while for us to enjoy Christmas again. It still feels weird six years later. But my mom and I bought new Christmas trees with new ornaments, and sufficiently changed how we decorate for Christmas. We each have our own tree (mine is Disney themed and Shell’s is beach themed), and we listen to music we love instead of Christmas music. Yesterday, we decorated our trees while dancing and singing to 80s music, reggae, and some Disney music too!

We had planned on making some of our favorite foods for dinner (raw vegan wraps), but time flew by and dinner time passed! We ended up being sufficiently fed by fruit and veggie snacks we ate throughout the day, as well as some food we still had in the fridge.

There was no feast or any sense of cultural norms for this holiday, and it was GLORIOUS!

The only trace of societal norms in our day had to do with our morning. Thanksgiving celebrates a feast between the pilgrims and Native Americans, but the actual history is far more gruesome. We spent our morning researching this and listening to what Native Americans had to say about this holiday.

At some point in this quest for knowledge, I found a website that would show us which Native tribes used to live on the land we now occupy. If anyone is interested, follow this link to the website!

After learning which tribes lived here, I looked up their names to discover what happened to them. It was heartbreaking to read, but educational to learn exactly what took place on the very land we live on.

We’re going to start a new tradition of honoring the Tongva and Yuhaviatam/Maarenga’yam tribes. We don’t know how we’ll do that yet, as this is all quite new. Maybe it will be as simple as keeping them in mind throughout the day, or maybe we’ll even go to a museum or something! We don’t know, as our holidays can vary on a yearly basis.

All I know is that we ignored societal norms and just did our own thing, and it was GLORIOUS!

Shell here!

If I had to look back and choose the worst thanksgiving holiday, I would say 2014 when Art was in his hospice bed dying. I try to never think back on that thanksgiving because it hurts my soul too much.

A year later in 2015, we found ourselves trying to figure out what thanksgiving would like and what we would do. We did sneak away to Hawaii a couple weeks before thanksgiving, but we chose to come home for the actual day of thanksgiving. We figured a lot of people would be traveling and the last thing we wanted on this holiday was to be around a bunch of people and to see families together at thanksgiving in Hawaii at Aulani. We chose to make all our favorite foods, stay in our pajamas and watch movies and feast all day. I

t actually turned out nicely. It was very peaceful considering that our lives the year prior were full of hospice and death. I remember we were both proud of ourselves; we had made a new tradition for thanksgiving, and it worked for us.

We found that most of 2016, we were asking quite a few life questions. Why did our whole family die? What was the common denominator? We were basically asking life questions, knowing we would never get answers. In life, people die. It is the one guarantee we are all given: death.

As we were pondering these life questions, we ran into a family in Hollywood while Jay was on set for a show. It was as if the universe was trying to answer the questions we kept asking repeatedly. Why did they die? Why did Art, who was so young, get pancreatic cancer?

The family we met changed their lives and chose a healthy lifestyle of being whole food plant-based. I kept asking the lady questions, and we talked the entire day. She explained to me the difference between plant-based and vegan, mainly because I kept asking, “You’re like a vegan?” She very politely kept explaining the difference to me.

 Just to give you a little information, the difference is plant-based means not eating animal products, oils or processed foods for your own health. Veganism is an activist choice to stop cruelty to animals in all aspects of your life; the food you eat, clothes you wear and products you use. The nice lady recommended books to me and documentaries to watch.

That is all it took for Jay and me. With all the research and unlearning the American western diet, we found our answers. Our family died from poor food choices and unhealthy habits. We made a choice to change our lives and went whole food plant-based VEGAN overnight. After watching the documentaries, we knew we had to do our part to stop cruelty to animals. We are both huge animal lovers and these documentaries had us in tears for weeks.

With this new life choice, it meant once again that thanksgiving of 2016 would look different for us. It was a fun thanksgiving for us because we had to re-learn how to cook all our favorite foods. 2016- 2019 thanksgiving whole food plants-based vegan was a huge success. We kept to our new tradition of staying in our pajamas watching movies and feasting on delicious food.

Then 2020 happened! We have gone through so much change this year, in some ways, it has been pretty incredible. With all the injustice happening around us, the protests, fights for equality, and let’s not forget the nasty covid; something inside of me stirred once again. We started asking more questions and re-evaluating our lives. We had questions of what kind of people do we want to be? What do we stand for? How can we change? What can we learn or unlearn? It has been a year of growth for us.

Then the sneaky holidays started to sneak back around, and you guessed it, our thanksgiving tradition changed once again. As we grew this year, our thoughts about thanksgiving sparked more questions and how we wanted to partake in it.

I am here to share that if I were to pick my favorite “thanksgiving,” I would have to say to all of you, November 26, 2020 was hands down the best one EVER!

We decided last week that we didn’t want to spend the day in the kitchen cooking. Since we became raw vegans, that meant spending the whole day in the kitchen chopping, dicing, blending, and using the food processor. Neither of us wanted to do that.

We decided that we would take down our Halloween decorations. Yes, they were still up because our favorite holiday is Halloween. Yes, we are the Halloween nerds that have already picked out our costumes for next year. No, we don’t do the whole scary part; we love Disney and that is where we spend Halloween. Except this year, picture our sad faces here.

Not only did we decide we were going to take down the Halloween, but we wanted to put our two Christmas trees. At first, we had planned on keeping Halloween up until January and bypass the rest of the holidays. But our new plan was to get up, put Halloween away, put up Christmas, clean up and make our favorite spring rolls and watch movies in our pajamas.

When we woke up yesterday, we started talking in depth about the thanksgiving holiday and what it means to us. We discussed the history of this holiday and how it came to be in the United States. We started to feel conflicted about his holiday because it no longer aligns with our beliefs. One thing we have learned from grief is that we change any holidays to align with our own personal beliefs. We do not have to stick to traditional or societal norms if we choose not to. We can make any holiday our very own. That is exactly what we did yesterday.

We researched and found a website that showed what native American tribes lived in our city, and we even found our street on the map. We had a long conversation discussing the real history behind native Americans. We decided, due to our beliefs in not partaking in animal cruelty and fighting for equality, to honor Native Americans and the tribes that stood here before us. We found that ignoring the cultural norms of thanksgiving traditions is what works best for us, so it’s what we did.

After our amazing conversation, we put on some reggae and got busy with our decorations. We danced and sang all day; and the energy in our home was peaceful, free, and fun!

We had so much fun together, even our dogs were having a good time. By the end of the day, we realized that neither of us were very hungry, so we decided not to make our spring rolls. We thought about all the other years of us siting on the couch super stuffed from all the food we ate, and how our bellies were happy and not stuffed this year. We both smiled and laughed all day, and our hearts were very content and happy.

We had so much fun that we decided this is going to be our new tradition. When the United States have thanksgiving, we are calling our new holiday thanksLiving. A day of remembrance, and a day to decorate, dance, sing and have fun. Celebrating life, all animals and Native Americans. Best day ever!

Jay and Shell’s Tips:

• It’s okay to change up your holiday a bit! We just changed everything about ThanksLiving, including what we call it, and it was our best holiday yet! You are under no obligation to follow any norms. There’s no limits!
• Nurture your grief. Tend to your aching soul and hurting heart. Do whatever you know will work in your best interest.
• Make new traditions! This isn’t a requirement, but it has helped us a ton. Start doing something new that you enjoy and has no memories attached. Then you’re just doing something for you, no memories, pain or obligation attached.
• Most importantly, listen to the needs of your grieving heart and soul. If you make plans and then wake up and want to change them, do it! You are grieving and you are well within your rights to do whatever works best for you. Grief hurts, and you have every right to do what your heart says is best for you.

Aloha and gratitude,

Jay and Shell