Holding It All: Grief, Joy, and Racial Consciousness at Thanksgiving
Tomorrow, millions of people will gather around tables—some by choice, some by obligation, many by both.These gatherings are more than logistical events. They're spaces where psychological and social dynamics play out in real time, where people either feel safe or hypervigilant, held or invisible, able to be themselves or performing versions of themselves.
For African Americans, Thanksgiving gatherings carry particular weight. The holiday itself is built on a founding myth that obscures genocide and forced displacement. Many Black families navigate this paradox every year: gathering to express gratitude in a country whose systems continue to benefit from historical and ongoing oppression. And this year, that weight carries the specific gravity of a particular political moment—one that has made systemic racism and inequality more visible, more discussed, and for many, more acutely felt.This isn't a complaint about the holiday—it's a recognition that Thanksgiving tables exist within a larger social context that shapes how people experience being in those spaces. Right now, that context is especially charged.
Whether you're hosting tomorrow or arriving as a guest, the psychological space you help create matters. And creating that space intentionally requires understanding both what's happening beneath the surface and what you can actually influence.
The Body Keeps Score at the Dinner Table
Somatic therapy teaches us something important: our bodies don't separate individual psychology from social context. They hold both simultaneously. When a Black guest at your table has experienced discrimination atwork this week, their nervous system carries that. When someone from a marginalized community sits in aroom where they've historically had to shrink themselves, their body responds—sometimes with tension, sometimes with dissociation, sometimes with hypervigilance.
This doesn't mean you've caused harm by inviting them. It means the world has shaped their nervous system in particular ways, and they're arriving with that. Understanding this is foundational.
Somatic awareness also tells us that safety is felt before it's understood intellectually. A person can't think their way into relaxation if their body perceives threat. Conversely, genuine safety—created through consistent attunement, respect of boundaries, and authentic presence—actually allows nervous systems to downregulate. People become more themselves, not less.
This matters for everyone at your table, but it has specific resonance for people who navigate the world as members of marginalized groups. They're often reading rooms continuously, monitoring for safety cues. Creating spaces where they can stop doing that internal scan and actually be present is an act of psychological liberation.
What Creates Psychological Safety?
Psychological safety isn't about pretending systemic issues don't exist. It's not about tone-policing or askingpeople to make others comfortable by minimizing their experiences. Actual safety is built on something different: clarity, consistency, and genuine respect.
Clarity about the space you're creating. If you're hosting, this might mean being explicit about your intentions. "In this space, we talk about real things, including hard things. People's experiences are honored here, not debated. If someone shares something about their life, we listen rather than argue." This clarity allows people's nervous systems to relax—they know what's expected and can trust that the space has structure.
Consistency in how you treat people. This is where the systemic part becomes visible. Notice who you interrupt and who you let finish. Notice whose story gets engagement and whose gets dismissed. Notice who gets to be complex and who gets flattened into a single narrative. These patterns are visible to everyone in the room, even if they're not spoken about. They shape whether people feel genuinely welcome or performing welcome.
Genuine respect for people's boundaries. This includes not interrogating Black guests about their race, not asking them to educate you about their experiences, not touching their hair, not asking intrusive questions about their family or relationships. Boundaries are where respect becomes concrete. Respecting them communicates: "Your comfort and autonomy matter here."
The Specificity of Being a Thoughtful White Host or Guest
If you're white, there's additional awareness worth cultivating. Thanksgiving gatherings often include racial demographics that matter. The comfort and safety of Black guests—and your role in creating it—isn't a secondary consideration. It's central to the gathering's actual quality.
This might mean: noticing when conversation turns toward racial topics and Black people at the table suddenly get very quiet. That silence often signals they're calculating risk. Speak up. Name what you're noticing with curiosity rather than accusation: "I noticed the energy shift. I want to say that racist comments aren't okay in this space." This simple act relieves the burden on Black guests to manage the racial dynamics themselves.
It might mean: not centering yourself or your own feelings about race. If someone shares an experience with racism, the conversation isn't about your guilt or your good intentions. It's about what they experienced. You can care deeply while staying focused on them.
It might mean: actually listening to what's being said rather than preparing your defense or counter-argument. Somatic presence—being fully with what someone is sharing rather than in your own head—is a gift you can give.
For Black Guests: The Freedom and the Risk
If you're arriving as a Black guest, there's something worth acknowledging: Thanksgiving dinner is often the one space where Black folks feel safe enough to actually say the things that usually stay unsaid. The frustration about work discrimination. The grief about how the healthcare system failed a loved one. The rage about a system that continues to extract value while denying dignity. The mourning of what could have been if resources and opportunities were distributed differently.
Having space to lament, to be angry, to name what's broken—this matters. Your family gathered around a table often feels like one of the few places where you don't have to translate your experience for people who don't live it. You can just say it, and people understand. That's valuable. Don't dismiss that.
But there's something else worth considering too: whether the space only becomes a container for grief and rage, or whether it can hold multiple things at once.
Grief and rage are real. They're also exhausting to carry alone. And when Thanksgiving becomes primarily a space where Black folks gather to process what's been done to them, something shifts. The gathering can become heavy with justified pain. Relatives leave drained rather than restored. The table that was supposed to be a refuge becomes another place where the weight of the world is the main course.
This is a delicate balance. It's not about denying pain or pretending things are okay when they're not. It's about whether this particular gathering can also be a space for laughter that has nothing to do with coping. For inside jokes that belong only to this family. For appreciation of the people actually sitting at the table. For the kind of fun and lightness that feels like an act of resistance precisely because the world tells us we shouldn't have it.
Consider: What are you needing from this gathering? Do you need it to be primarily a space to process and grieve? Or can it be a mix? Can grief and rage have room to breathe and can you also laugh at your uncle's terrible jokes, appreciate the food someone spent hours making, notice the ways people show up for each other?
You get to decide. And that decision shapes what you bring to the table and how you experience it. Years of navigating spaces where you've had to manage other people's comfort can create patterns where you only show up with your struggle, because that feels most real, most honest. But you're more than your pain. Your joy, your humor, your capacity to be playful—these are also true.
What do you actually need tomorrow to feel whole rather than just processed? That might look like: setting a time limit on heavy conversations. Creating a buddy system with someone you can make eye contact with when things get heavy. Planning what lightness or humor you want to bring. Giving yourself permission to laugh without guilt. Leaving a conversation that's become too much—not because you're weak, but because you're protecting your own capacity to show up with more than just your wound.
The Larger Context
Individual gatherings exist within systems. One Thanksgiving table where someone feels genuinely safe and seen doesn't undo systemic racism or historical trauma. But it also isn't insignificant. Somatic experiences—of being held, respected, truly listened to—create different imprints on our nervous systems. They're tiny counterexperiences to the larger world.
More importantly, when you create intentional psychological space, you're practicing something. You're learning what it feels like to respect boundaries. To listen without defending. To hold complexity. To notice patterns of exclusion or dismissal and interrupt them. These practices, accumulated across many conversations and gatherings, actually do shift culture—not through individual goodwill, but through repeated, consistent behavior.
This is how systemic change happens in part: through the accumulated micro-choices of people who are paying attention and choosing differently.
Tomorrow
As you prepare for tomorrow—whether you're cooking, arriving with a dish, or simply showing up—the question worth asking isn't "Will this be perfect?" It won't be. The question is: "What psychological space am I helping to create, and am I doing that with awareness?"
Notice your nervous system. Notice others'. Pay attention to who's talking and who's gone quiet. Notice patterns of inclusion and exclusion happening in real time. You won't get it all right, and that's okay. Getting it partially right, with genuine intention and the willingness to notice when you've missed something, is already different.
Thanksgiving tables can be spaces of genuine connection across difference. They can be places where people—including Black folks navigating a holiday built on a lie—actually feel welcomed and held. Not because we ignore the larger context, but because we stay aware of it while choosing, in this moment, to create something intentional.
That's what's available to you tomorrow. Not perfection. Just presence, intention, and the willingness to think critically about the space you're creating.
