Thankful for Community (&Accountability)

We do not recognize yesterday’s colonizer’s holiday as the primary reason to celebrate gratitude and thankfulness.  That should be said first and foremost. The narrative of history most of us have come to know as “Thanksgiving” drastically manipulates the record and erases the pivotal importance Indigenous populations played (and continue to play) in our country’s story.  Regardless of what your present day beliefs are, we would like to encourage you to take some time for yourself and educate yourself and your loved ones about 1) the true history of the holiday, and 2) how for many, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning and remembrance before it is a day of feasting and family. 

It is crucial that we retell the story the correct way, and acknowledge the colonizer’s wrongdoings to the First Peoples of this land, so that history may not repeat itself--so that we may offer true gratitude and thanks where it is due. Without the Wampanoag people, the English colonizers would have starved and perished.  If you are a person who enjoys any part of Thanksgiving, please seek out information about its inception. 

It is an amazing piece of the human condition that we have the ability to learn how to reframe our ideas about how the world works around us and how we fit into it.  This holiday season is a perfect opportunity to do so.  The first steps are self reflection and information absorption.  Then the reframing begins.

At Kindred, we are a community of folks who believe that challenging prior beliefs is important.  We would also like to extend the offer of a safe space in which we can go through that process together.  Sure, we’re always here to teach new handicrafts, take your recycling, offer beautiful new and new-to-you things that reduce our impact on our environment...these are also all pieces of how we want to live our values, and encourage you to live yours, every day.  This is something we are thankful for.  Thank you for your continued support in this, so that we may be a space for us and for all of you for a long time to come.

Our community is a wellspring of inspiration for which we are incredibly thankful.  We wax episodic about all the fun things we get to bring into our space.  This year, this holiday, we want to pause and slow down.  Giving credit where it’s due, acknowledging the factual historic record for a holiday that is widely celebrated but rarely examined is important to us. It is another opportunity where we can actually be about it rather than just appearing to be about it.

No part of this is designed to bring about feelings of shame or guilt.  However, within the process of reframing, reducating, and challenging one’s prior beliefs, those feelings are bound to come up.  THAT IS OKAY.  It’s part of the process. Feeling those things are steps towards accountability.  This is the part where we remind you that because we have each other, our community--you can do that with us and in our midst.  All we have is each other, with all the craziness going on in our world around us, and to know that we can rely on one another, hold one another accountable, and push one another to grow--is a truly marvelous thing to be thankful for.  

We are delighted to remind you that we’re closed today.  Come visit us tomorrow, where we will be open for business and more importantly, open for conversation.