Search Topics
My Family’s Thanksgiving
Submitted by: Diane B
Bellevue, WAConsultant in the process of becoming a teacher, with a wonderful husband
This story comes well before reading The Secret book, but it took me reading the book to realize that my mother is the queen of manifestation and has yet to figure it out.
My father left us, my mother and five children, with no money and no stability, when I was six years old. My mother, 23 at the time, had no High School Degree, no college education, no formal work experience; nothing. He left us with a two seater truck, and a run down two bedroom mobile home in the middle of nowhere, with a hole in the kitchen floor. My mother believed from day one that everything would work out.
The first year was the most difficult in my eyes, but not in my mother’s. She continually told me that “you can make anything happen”. Thanksgiving came around and we had been living off of several cans of refried beans, tomato soup, and powdered milk, which we were incredibly grateful for regardless of the scheme of the situation. My mother said that even though she was making minimum wage working eighty hours a week, we would have a big Thanksgiving dinner. I was not sure how this was possible, being six years old and already understanding what it meant to occasionally miss a meal.
The Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving my bus driver, Mary Lou, the sweetest lady on earth, said, “Now you enjoy your Thanksgiving, and I will see you on Monday.” I did not have the heart to worry her about the fact that we would not have Thanksgiving. Low and behold, I walked in the door with several of my siblings following me and on the table were TWO 20 lbs Turkeys, stuffing, potatoes, real milk, and more candy and canned food than any family of six could hope for on any given day. My mother was sitting on the floor in the living room bawling her eyes out. She knew that we would have Thanksgiving but didn’t know how…
The bus drivers within our school district get together every year and come up with a Thanksgiving dinner for two families, and deliver it to their homes the day before. The catch was that you had to call the school district and petition to be one of the families that received these meals. My mother had never called, we had never mentioned a word about not having a Thanksgiving dinner, but my mother believed… oh did she believe. We ate for what seemed like days, our previously diminishing bellies incredibly full. We even had pumpkin pie.
That same year Christmas came around, and my mother, with no money in her pocket, and all of the humility in the world, went down to the local food bank to see if she could petition for a group gift for her children to share. In return we would volunteer to box food for however long they needed us.
On Christmas Eve at least ten bags full of gifts were delivered to the porch steps of our old beaten up trailer, along with a Christmas tree and a box of lights and tinsel, some popcorn, and five new sweaters. We do not know to this day who delivered these items, as the food bank had to turn my mother down. My mother BELIEVED though that her children would have a Christmas, and we did. An amazing one. To this day we talk about how blessed we all are…
From my mother believing so much in good things happening she has taken five children in poverty, had two more, who have all done amazing things. She now lives on a paradise island in the Pacific with a beautiful home, a sports car, an SUV, a wonderful husband, two additional children, and runs a beauty salon where she specializes in making people feel better by smiling at them day in and day out. I have graduated from a top university, make twice as much as any grad in my class, am returning to school to fulfill my dream of teaching special ed, and live in an amazing home in the nicest part of one of the most beautiful and richest places in the U.S. Every one of my siblings has pursued a medical degree of some kind, and are all incredibly successful. We are very, very blessed, and we came from nothing.