The stories here on ThanksgivinginFebruary.com explore making peace with ourselves, our families, each other and our world. I believe we make our own peace, with love, and from scratch. Similar to how we make great apple pies, our homes, big family dinners and quilts.

It’s hard work, over time. The same way I craft stories and am building out this website: By hand, from scratch and with love.

All by myself and simply following a recipe? Not at all! Only with help from the divine source of all love and all peace, God. (I’ll talk and write about my faith, but never intend to pressure anyone. Read Some Thoughts on Faith.)

My point is that we all have a lot of work to do to make peace happen. Just look around.

How? My stories explore these questions and are intended to be inspiration for your journey.

I’m a seeker. A wanderer and a writer. One who questions. I offer my stories, life experience, ideas and ability to find information and experts.

The Gifts of Solitude & Wild Peace

In my 20s, I spent much of my leisure time alone in beautiful places on the Maine coast. Walking along beach roads and sand dunes. Sitting beside the sea or a lake, writing and reading. Hiking through forests, climbing mountains in western Maine, and planting gardens. My beautiful and soul-satisfying love affair with the natural world.

Making peace with everyone in my life and all around me struck me as an important life goal. This insight was a gift. If not for all that quiet time, I may have missed it. Though at the time, I wondered why I was alone so much.

More than two decades later, I’ve landed in a sweet spot in my life, when I feel a deep peace and contentment — even though there is still so much hard work to be done in this world.

And I know how fragile peace is. Life can change in an instant. Peace is not just found in the quiet stillness of wild places and the pews of sacred sanctuaries, but is itself elusive and wild.

When we make peace with ourselves, with our families and with the natural world and world around us, I believe everything is better. 

We talk about wanting peace — but are enough of us prepared to do our own work to make it?

And what do you do if someone is not interested in making peace with you? And does making peace mean you are silent about what’s bugging you? Maybe sometimes. But not always. Making peace may start with saying your peace. 

Finding Gratitude in the Darkest Times

If you’ve been on this journey with me the last few years, first: Thank you. You know gratitude has been the focus of my stories. Gratitude was a central part of the true family story at the heart of Thanksgiving in February.

Finding gratitude in the darkest times and in the dead of winter is a symbolic, lasting lesson of Thanksgiving in February. So was pie, and turkey and stuffing. And connection.

Here we are in February 2021, the darkest winter in my lifetime.

Gratitude remains an essential practice.

What I’m working to create here is a place for stories about making peace. Those are the stories I feel called to write. 

I sincerely hope you enjoy them, feel a lift or inspiration.

These stories need a home. One built by hand, from scratch and with love.

Welcome. Thank you for reading and being here. My peace I give unto you.