It’s ONE WEEK to thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is something that I’ve never really understood, maybe because up until a few years ago, I didn’t know or care that much about thanksgiving. November 2015 was the first year I celebrated thanksgiving. I remember being happy just to get a break from high school but if you’d asked me the significance or even the exact date of thanksgiving I would have stared blankly at you. Now four years later, it still remains as a break from college. However, I have learned to appreciate the time spent with family that it gives me that I would otherwise not have or be too busy for.
So on the topic of family, I started to wonder what family means. My parents still live in Kenya and I now live with my sister and her husband and so thanksgiving is spent with my sisters in-laws. These are people I would consider family despite the fact that we are neither blood related nor have we known each other for a long time. So I started to wonder about the definition of family, what is family? What does family mean? What makes somebody family? Blood-relations? What if you adopt? Is it defined by the number of years spent together?
I think that family is subjective. I say this because I was adopted but I have never considered myself to be different from the family that I grew up in. I also live away from my parents in a foreign country. And so I am celebrating a holiday with people that I am not technically related too. But what is interesting is that I still consider them family not because of blood-relations but because of the way I have been welcomed into their homes and lives with little to no previous knowledge on who I was.
I hope that this thanksgiving, you spend time with family and/or friends or maybe even by yourself. I hope that you can enjoy a little bit of a break from everyday life and focus on those around you and all you should be thankful for. How are you choosing to spend this thanksgiving? I am spending this thanksgiving holiday twice. Once with my family and a second time with my church friends. So whatever you choose to do, I hope you enjoy yourself.
Happy thanksgiving.
