It is Thanksgiving week here in the US, so this will be one of many posts you will see on gratitude. This one will be short, I promise. I’m just dipping a toe back in, re-emerging into this space after far too long, and hoping to reconnect with all of you.

Because that is the point of this post. I may find it difficult right now to be grateful for the direction of our country, but it is never difficult to feel grateful for your presence in my life. You have kept me afloat, with your emails, and invitations, and postcards. Your posts have reminded me that life outside of my self-imposed bubble goes on. And that I need to rejoin that world – to focus outward instead of inward.

So thank you. For your friendship and your steadfastness. I am beyond lucky to have stumbled into this community, with its inclusiveness, its stubborn insistence on connection and depth, and its empathy. Your presence in my life makes it brighter.

“A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them. ” ~ From Consolations, by David Whyte