The Holidays: Ugh!
The hype, false promises, nostalgia, expectations and longing come crashing down in a sugar coma. My childhood memories of Thanksgiving were great---I grew up in an extended family of musicians so the holiday gathering was another opportunity to jam. Lavish feasting, gin, jazz and swing overshadowed the darker side of Thanksgiving in America which I came to view as a state sanctioned pogrom for turkeys, a celebration of brutal colonialism, slaughter and betrayal. Repulsed by the legacy of bloodshed, I believed any culture that gleefully produces a “turducken,” stuffing a chicken into a duck and then a turkey is doomed to fail. Then, one day, something changed. I decided to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday as a Day of Gratitude.
From 1964 to 1997 I enjoyed a slamming career as Donna, cross-addicted. Though I enjoyed icy summer cocktails and hot fall toddies the party really kicked in around Thanksgiving, careening non-stop through St. Patty’s Day until it as time for a refreshing season of vodka-cranberry smoothies and valium. For many years after my last dance, I shivered with fear. Clean and sober, from November to March each year I still felt that darkness, the soul chill, sorrow, a hatred of life. The residual doom of late stage addiction crept through me each Thanksgiving like cold death, reminding me what it was like, then.
Addiction is a disease of isolation, a solitary confinement of the spirit that tortures and kills its victims slowly. The profane substance that promises easy redemption slowly takes over leaving the shell of our humanity enslaved, alone, and needing more. During the holidays, the addict’s hellscape of anger, loneliness, shame and fear often comes to a rolling boil. It’s a dangerous time for my people, but it can also be the prelude to a miracle. It’s primetime for the fishers of men and women, the survivors who reach out each day to drowning souls only God and the devil can see.
The Day of Gratitude kicks off a full-blown season of love and service. On11/26/22, the Friday after the traditional feast with the musician family I “married” into, I spent a Day of Gratitude celebrating Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill Wilson’s 123rd birthday along with over 600 people zooming in from Italy, Egypt, the U.K., Africa and all over the USA. After a tour of Wilson House, our hosts—all volunteers, had organized a Gratitude Meeting. Where a closed meeting is for addicts only, this was an open one, for everyone; family and friends, people in recovery, students, the curious, the ones folks hope will keep coming back.
Wilson House is recovery mecca for alcoholics who make a pilgrimage to the birthplace and childhood home of the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous in East Dorset, Vermont. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, anyone can visit, rent a room, peruse archival collections, drink coffee, buy recovery artifacts, visit Bill’s gravesite and Lois Wilson’s too—his wife and the founder of Al-Anon. Comb through epic memorabilia and enjoy sober community and educational programs. https://www.wilsonhouse.org/
Aldous Huxley called Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson the greatest social architect of the 20th century. Following the inception of A.A. in 1935, other anonymous fellowships followed, modeled on the 12 Step program—narcotics, gambling, food, crystal meth, love, sex, codependency. The website posts this disclaimer “The Wilson House is not affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous or any other sect, denomination or religion.”
Live with an attitude of gratitude—I’m grateful for the gift of life, for the people I love, for waking up in a clean, safe place, with food, heat and hot water, for my car, our cats, the kids on my street, the ocean, the garden, for everything under the sun, and for Love itself, always present, called or called.
May goodness and mercy follow you, all the days of your life.
Donna Gaines, 11/2022
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