Her Next Chapters

59. Deep Gratitude: What the Garden Teaches About Thanksgiving

• Christina Kohl

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Gratitude isn't just a Thanksgiving ritual; it's a transformative power that enriches our lives every day. Imagine if we truly recognized the effort behind every bite on our Thanksgiving table. From my personal journey as a gardener, I've learned to appreciate the labor behind even a single tomato. This episode invites you to join me in exploring how deep gratitude versus surface gratitude can shift our perspectives, urging us to see beyond the surface and cherish the unseen hands that bring abundance into our lives.

We'll journey beyond the holiday's traditional thankfulness for family and friends, delving into the profound appreciation for the intricate processes behind our conveniences. Whether you celebrate Thanksgiving or not, cultivating gratitude can enhance your connections and improve overall well-being. Embrace this practice with us and discover how it can enrich your daily life. 

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Christina Kohl:

Hi and welcome to Her Next Chapter's podcast. I'm your host, hristina Cole. I'm a mom of three and soon to be an empty nester. I'm also a certified HR pro who restarted my career after being a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. I created this podcast to connect with moms who have an empty nest on the horizon and are wanting to redefine their identity outside of motherhood, which might include a job search. On this show, we'll have raw conversations about our ever-changing roles as moms. We'll hear from women who restarted their careers and share tips for a job search after a career break. So if that's you, you're in the right place. Friend, let's get started.

Christina Kohl:

Hello, friends, and welcome to this week's episode of Her Next Chapters, so glad as always to have you here with me. If you're listening in real time this episode, well, I'm recording it on Tuesday, but it's going to go live tomorrow, wednesday, which happens to be the day before Thanksgiving. So, as you can tell by the title, I'm talking about gratitude, and you know the season of thankfulness which Thanksgiving kind of brings, you know, top of mind. So, with Thanksgiving upon us, we obviously have gratitude for the meals that we share, the people that we love and the traditions that we maintain and you know that's the whole kind of day is the cooking, the turkey, the, the special dishes that maybe your family has, that that are unique to you gGuys. My sister-in-law is coming over. Hi, Beth, if you're listening, can't wait for the snicker bar salad. Yes, it is a salad, honest, there's fruit in there with it, not just the snicker bars. So if you want the recipe, I'll have to talk to my sister-in-law, but reach out and let me know and I'll see if I can get it for you. Anyway, all of those traditions and gathering with loved ones just really brings around a lot of thoughts, around gratitude, and for me I was thinking about going a little deeper because so many times with gratitude at least for me, maybe you can relate to this it's kind of like at that very high level, you know, oh, I'm so thankful for my friends and thankful for my family, thankful for my husband, thankful for my house, thankful for the food on the table, right. But that's all kind of like surface level, right. So we want to, I want to move and maybe you can move with me if it's of interest to you, if you're listening to this podcast, but moving beyond the surface level of thank yous and really getting to that heartfelt appreciation and what kind of inspired me to talk about this? Obviously Thanksgiving.

Christina Kohl:

But I'm a gardener and I believe I've talked I know I've talked on the podcast earlier about gardening and here in Colorado we have a very short gardening season outdoors, so for me to plant my own seeds, I have to do it indoors and I plant the seeds on a table that I have down in our basement and I have a grow light. I have a warming pad underneath them because it's not very, not very warm in our basement. So there's a grow pad with a grow light and I have to go down there every single day to water them and I've got to light the light on a timer. My point being is that it takes a lot of intentionality and a lot of time and nurturing, and even when the seedlings grow in the garden downstairs in my basement, then they have to transition to outside and so it just takes a lot of time and nurturing and, of course, once they're in the garden, then you got to water them and make sure there's no pests. The deer are the pest in our community. They come and eat my garden, so I do have to protect it from that as well as just bugs and stuff. My point being, when I have the tomato at the end of the harvest season it is so delicious, not just because it's homegrown, but because I know everything that went into producing that tomato. I just enjoy it that much more.

Christina Kohl:

And I was thinking Thanksgiving is, you know, it's obviously gathering with family and loved ones, but the food is kind of the celebration, right, that's the central focus of Thanksgiving the turkey, the mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce. All of that is so focused on food and it just got me thinking about what it takes for me to produce one tomato. Think about what it takes to produce the potato that's coming your way in, the mashed potatoes, and the farmer that plants them and then nurtures and tends to them, and then being harvested out of the ground and cleaned and bagged and delivered and then put on the shelf. I mean all the things that it takes to get just the one ingredient. Okay, we're not even talking about the dairy farm that produces the butter and then how that butter gets packaged and again cold shipped to you, to the grocery store, to the truck, down the train, however it gets there. I don't even know how it gets there. But just pausing for the moment to think about that.

Christina Kohl:

And we're probably going to have I don't know, my husband is the cook. I love him for that. Thanksgiving is his holiday as far as cooking. Anyway, there are going to be let's just say conservatively, say 20, 25 ingredients on your table when you sit down to eat. Somebody had to make all of those. Not make them, but do the planting and the harvesting and the tending and nurturing and then the packaging and the delivering and all of that, just to get us the food that we just kind of take for granted.

Christina Kohl:

At least I know that's kind of my perspective, and when I was eating my own homegrown food it just made me stop to appreciate how I can just go to the grocery store and buy what I want and bring that home and then make the meal, and that is just something to be grateful for. But there are just so many hands human hands involved and machinery, if you want to think about the machinery. The humans made those too, and humans made the machines and keep the machines running. So there are just so many people involved beyond what we think of at the surface level. Is my husband, john, responsible for the meal on our table. Yes, he's planning it. I mean I've got input and I'm helping him and all that, but he's planning it, he's doing the majority of the work. So I'm absolutely grateful to him. And just recognizing that's just the tip of the iceberg of how all that food came to be and how it became accessible to us.

Christina Kohl:

And my point in all of this, I do have a point. It's just the same thing with our food that level of deeper gratitude and deeper appreciation that applies to our relationships too. Our relationships grow from consistent care and effort, and that's something that I think is really meaningful too as we gather around the Thanksgiving table. So I know I've gone a deep dive here in the food. I mean, thanksgiving it's all about the food, right? That's the kind of the holiday, is the meal, the feast, and we have all these traditional foods that most people are going to be eating on Thursday here in the US. But it's also the people, the people that are around the table, the people that gather and having this opportunity to go deeper in our gratitude.

Christina Kohl:

So, obviously, the surface gratitude is the quick thanks for the obvious things. The deep gratitude is taking a moment to reflect on the invisible work and sacrifices of others. So what we invest in our relationships and here's where we consider not just what we're grateful for, but why we're grateful for it. And applying this to Thanksgiving gatherings is so important to acknowledge the time, the thought and love that goes into everything, from meals but also to relationships, and just really sit in that gratitude, maybe at a deeper level than what you normally do. And I'm speaking when I say you, I mean me too. So, anyway, I hope that this is giving you a little bit of insight, something to think about, giving you a little bit of insight, something to think about.

Christina Kohl:

Like I said, my personal takeaway gardening has taught me to appreciate the unseen, both in food and in life, and I challenge you to reflect on one person or experience that you're deeply grateful for and why, and I encourage you to express that gratitude during Thanksgiving.

Christina Kohl:

What better time than that? And just to end here with a reminder deep gratitude transforms the way we see our lives and our connections. All right, well, I hope that was insightful. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you celebrate it, and even if you don't, it's a good time to be thinking about what you're thankful for in your life and just kind of this gratitude practice of going deeper, all right, well, that's it for this week. My friends, as always, have a great week and I will talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this episode hit home for you and, if you haven't already, be sure to connect with me on LinkedIn and say hello so I can personally thank you for listening. Until next time, remember, your story is uniquely your own, and your next chapters are ready to begin.