The People at the Table

Every Thanksgiving, we’re invited to make a list.

Work wins. Milestones. Trips. Promotions. Pay raises. The stuff that looks good in a caption if you sprinkle the word “grateful” on top.

I’m thankful for those things. But when I look back over this past year, the moments that actually stayed with me didn’t happen on a stage or in a spreadsheet. They happened around tables, on worn-in couches, on long walks, in quiet side conversations after everyone else had gone home.

I’m grateful for friends who have seen me on the mountaintop and in the valley—and didn’t treat me any differently in either place. The ones who aren’t impressed by my résumé but are deeply invested in my soul. The ones who know the unpolished stories, the doubts, the conflict, the questions—and call me back to what’s true when I lose the plot.

There are people in my life who don’t just “check in” but actually stay—who remember the thing I said I was worried about three months ago and ask how it turned out, who show up with a meal, or a text, or a dumb meme at just the right time, and who aren’t quietly keeping score of who reached out last.

And then there are the relationships that have stretched me—the hard conversations that forced honesty, the reconciliations that took more humility than I thought I had, the quiet decision to forgive when it would’ve been easier to keep a little distance and call it “healthy boundaries.”

If I zoom out on the year, my life does not look like a straight, upward line of progress. It looks more like a web—threads of friendship and family and community holding me up in ways I don’t always notice in real time.

So this Thanksgiving, I’m especially thankful for the people who’ve chosen to share the road with me for a little while:
for old friends who feel like home,
for new friends who feel like a surprise gift,
and for the relationships that are still being repaired, rewritten, or rediscovered.

Maybe this Thanksgiving, before the dishes are done and everyone drifts to the next thing, you might take ten quiet seconds to notice: Who has held you up this year? And is there someone you need to thank before the day is over?

Happy Thanksgiving.
I’m grateful we get to walk this stretch of the road together.