Gratitude & Heartbreak

This is not your typical Thanksgiving article.

While I could easily write about all I am thankful for or about Thanksgiving traditions, I am instead writing this while reflecting on the lives of two wonderful people who passed away this past year. They were not my family members, but from the small pieces of their lives that intersected mine, I am confident that they were incredible people who greatly impacted the world they left behind.

This Thanksgiving I’m grateful for their impact. I’m heartbroken that they didn’t have more time. I’m grateful for the way they live on in the people they love. I’m heartbroken for the people they love.

I am proud of them for taking risks, loving others, taking the trips, celebrating milestones, and living a full life. I am inspired to do the same.

This Thanksgiving I hope we all have moments of love, joy, and gratitude even if they are surrounded by heartbreak. I hope we are present and take time to reflect on what truly matters to us, and we use that to live a slightly better life.

For me, I plan to be as present as possible this Thanksgiving. To look around and notice what I’m grateful for. I know this will include a shared meal with people I love more than I can say (some of whom are pictured above), mundane moments like coffee with my husband in our home, and hope for the future. I’m sure that I will continue to be struck by the connection that exists between love and vulnerability. Love requires us to open ourselves to heartbreak, and it seems to be through this vulnerability that we find great meaning. C.S. Lewis captures this beautifully when he wrote:

”There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, air-less – it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

I hope everyone reading this enjoys a great meal shared with people you love this Thanksgiving. Thank you for allowing us at RK to be a part of your lives.

Hannah Whatley, CFP® , AIF® is an Advisor with Rather & Kittrell.