“Are you going this year?”
It’s the question I’ve been asking friends for weeks now. And it’s the question they’ve been asking me.
The conversations always sound the same. There are logistics – the drive time, who’s hosting, whether you can claim car trouble as an excuse. Then we move to justifications – they’re old, you don’t see them often, they don’t really understand, maybe this year will be different. And then, inevitably, we land on the real question underneath it all.
How do you sit across from someone who voted for this?
When you’re a Red State Democrat, the holidays aren’t just about turkey and pie anymore. They’re about weighing your personal autonomy against your family roots. They’re about asking how much you’re willing to endure to sit at a table with people you love who voted to harm other people you love. They’re about wondering if showing up makes you complicit – one of the “good Germans” who kept passing the gravy while everything burned down around them.
Last year, I couldn’t do it. The wound was too fresh.
This year, I’m trying. Or, at least, I’m planning to.
If it feels like a violation to know that millions of your fellow Americans voted for a fraudster/felon/rapist/conman, try coming to terms with the fact that a family member did. Not just your crazy uncle thrice removed – but someone you love, someone who helped make you who you are, who instilled your values and morals and respect for humanity.
It’s a mind-bender and a heart-breaker.
I’ve written about my complicated relationship with my late Rush Limbaugh-loving father, but he’s not the only Republican in the family. And so there I was last Thanksgiving, days before the holiday, nursing open wounds from an election that upended millions of families like mine.
This wasn’t 2016, when I could absorb their ignorance like a guilt sponge and forgive them for not knowing what I knew. By 2024, we all knew. We had a track record of Trump’s past coupled with the Project 2025 playbook for his future. We had 34 felony convictions, so many allegations of sexual assault I couldn’t track them all, and direct evidence of his grifting and traitorous behavior. He led an insurrection, centered his campaign on racism and cruelty, and promised to go after the “enemy from within” – a crusade against people like you and me who won’t let MAGA go unopposed.
That was not a typical election. We were not debating the finer points of policy. That election was about decency and democracy and humanity. The stakes were clear; the information was out in the open and part of our lived experience.
In that context, not understanding the stakes wasn’t a lack of information; it was willful ignorance.
But I didn’t rely on outside messages breaking through. I sent text messages explaining my concern that Trump would destroy the economy and be a particularly terrifying role model for my now 13-year-old son. I explained that people like me are considered an “enemy from within” – and that Trump had talked about using the military against those enemies. “There are good reasons for me to be concerned,” I said.
Surely my safety, my free speech, my family would matter. Surely, I thought, my Republican family members would prioritize their own flesh and blood over a party label.
But they didn’t.
When a family member called me the Friday after the election and talked at me in a nervous stream of words – not mentioning the election that had just happened – I had my answer. When I asked point blank if they’d voted for him, the silence told me everything I didn’t want to know.
With that backdrop, I couldn’t look across a holiday table with anything but anger and heartache. I refused to smile sweetly and make small talk as my stomach churned. I refused to twist myself into knots preparing a house and cooking a dinner to give thanks when I was anything but grateful. And I refused to make excuses for grown adults who taught me to be better.
So last year, we stayed home.
This year is different.
Not easier. Not healed. Just … different.
The wound is still raw, but closed up enough that I think I can make the trip and keep my sometimes fiery disposition in check (or, at least, in check enough to pass the potatoes without making a snide comment). I think I can manage to keep the conversation to gardening and weather and the river and my son’s school.
Because as disappointed as I am in my family, they are still the people who made me who I am. They’re still the ones who kissed my skinned knees, held me when my heart was broken, braided my hair before soccer games, and taught me to ride a bike.
And I simply can’t accept that the people who helped make me who I am are completely unreachable. Progress is progress, and attempting to make progress with the people in my family of origin feels like the most meaningful effort – even if it’s fruitless.
But as I pack for the drive, I’ll be asking the same question that’s being asked by people like me all across the country: how do you knit back together a family that’s been split down the middle by MAGA?
Or – and this is the thornier question – should you? Is it better for your own mental health and for the children in your life to be separated from the people whose values are now so vastly different from yours?
How many times can you show up hoping for progress that never comes?
I don’t know the answer. Frankly, I don’t know that there even is one.
Last year I needed distance. This year I’m trying connection. Next year? I honestly don’t know.
What matters is that you’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to say “not this year” and you’re allowed to say “maybe this year.” You’re allowed to turn around. You’re allowed to protect yourself and you’re allowed to be vulnerable and you’re allowed to extend an olive branch. You’re allowed to decide that healing takes time, and that sometimes healing means staying away, and sometimes it means showing up anyway.
The coming years will have more than enough opportunities for all of us to navigate these impossible choices. There will be Thanksgivings where we stay home, and Thanksgivings where we go. There will be years when we can’t bear it, and years when we try.
And all of those choices – every single one of them – are acts of self-preservation in a world that keeps demanding we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of family peace.
Tomorrow my son and I will make the drive. We’ll listen to Christmas music and talk about the farms we see on the way. He’ll laugh and point out Teslas and Cybertrucks on the highway just to get my goat. I’ll hug my family. I’ll eat too much pie.
And when it’s my turn at the Thanksgiving table, I’ll give thanks for the people who gave me a heart so big and full that it can still hold them close – even if they struggle against it.
However you celebrate, wherever you celebrate, and with whomever you celebrate, I wish you the very best Thanksgiving, friend.
You deserve it.
~Michele
P.S. While in each Tuesday post I share a few “small deeds” to do, this is a holiday week and we should all take a few days to regroup. I’ll see you back here next week.
Small Deeds Done 