On this near day of giving, I ask myself how I may move forward with thanks while in the midst of tumultuous times?

Right now, the wind is blowing something fierce (as we would say in the South) but we’re here in the Pacific NW. It’s just a bit after 6:00 a.m.—a time when I am normally asleep, but there is too much running through me to keep me cozy. As I lay in bed, I consider the neighbors’ trees, so many slender pines and question how they are behaving in this moment. I consider the ferry trip that I will be taking across the Sound in a few hours.  I consider how I left school early yesterday, because I came down with something.—a sudden bug, that correlated with a day of just not right.

Not a fan of media, in general, it occasionally becomes necessary to tune in. Yesterday was one of those days. As I spoke with a friend on a class break, we discussed what most were discussing.—the Ferguson case, the Cosby debacle. How did we get here in 2014? We wondered.

I began to think of the many uncomfortable moments I experienced as the daughter of a mixed couple growing up in VA. How the heads would turn when my very Indian father would pick us up at the neighborhood pool versus my very Dutch mother. How even in the late eighties/early nineties, a certain hospital stopped placing physicians’ photos on the wall when a non-white doctor was promoted to a role that would require they showcase his image. How one afternoon, a dear friend out on a weekend drive with her mom, witnessed several men in long, white garb approaching a home with or without a cross.

Or how five years ago, my closest BART station was Fruitvale. Do I need to remind you what happened there in early 2009?

So what do we do now? How do we turn in this time, which we have misappropriated for an extra slice of pie, a reason to give thanks? How do we draw strength and nurture each other, among the absolute chaos?

I offer a video of Pema Chodron who speaks on the path of fearlessness.