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Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving is supposed to be about gratitude, family and sharing a delicious meal. But when you have a picky eater, it can also come with a side of unsolicited advice. “Just one bite!” “They’ll eat when they’re hungry.” “You ate everything we served you when you were little!” Sound familiar? For some families, navigating Thanksgiving dinner means managing more than an unfamiliar menu. It means fielding questions from relatives, worrying about whether your child will eat enough, and trying to keep the peace when someone insists they know exactly how to solve your child’s eating habits. As a mom of a child with ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder), I’ve learned that eating isn’t always as simple as putting food on a plate and taking a bite. Even if a kid’s eating challenges look different from ours, we can all benefit from a little more understanding around the dinner table. The…

One of my earliest memories is of being in a Thanksgiving play at school. It was first grade, and everyone in my class was assigned parts. Some of us were ‘Indians’, some of us were pilgrims, and some of us (including yours truly), were turkeys. I still remember the brown construction paper hat with the red, orange, and yellow ‘feathers’ that kept falling in my eyes as I gobbled my way across the gym stage. Back then, no one my age questioned the Thanksgiving narrative, which was more giant potluck and trading of essential goods, rather than genocide, colonization, and smallpox. Given that Indigenous peoples are still suffering from the violence white colonizers inflicted on their people, their land, and their way of life, it can be difficult to feel celebratory around Thanksgiving. In fact, Native Americans and their supporters have been gathering in Plymouth on Thanksgiving Day since 1970…