Photo by Alexander Mils
Thanksgiving in the Order is a huge and I mean HUGE potluck where all the Order members come together with food, and we all feast pretty much all day it seems. Honestly, probably started around noon and went until I dunno when, we always left for my grandparents house around 5 for dessert. Never trusted the “sugar free” dessert’s they had going on at the Order potluck…. in fact you had to be careful which dishes you ate from the tables, to prevent a “gut bomb” for the next few days! Us kids learned quickly which moms to not eat their food, and would spread the word… I never cared for the turkey, but my aunt made this super yummy shrimp salad that was Papa’s recipe, and I haven’t had it since I left the Order! I don’t have the recipe, and every recipe I’ve tried is not the same… my mom always made a huge crock pot of mashed potatoes, which were freaking AMAZING, and have now made me a mashed potato snob… #seriously
I loved going to the BIG Thanksgiving get together, even now I’m getting all nostalgic thinking about it. I loved getting together with all my friends and family, and I guess I should say they were all family #haharight #iwasstilllearningthefamilytree #bush #tobedetermined BUT we ran around and played arcades, which were brought in by the Orders arcade company. We played games, did crafts, in fact I don’t think I hardly even saw my mom after I finished my food!! Just ran around having the most fun a little girl could have!! I think that’s one thing that outsiders don’t realize is the fellowship in the Order, and the Order sure knows how to party! There were people playing card games, playing risk, playing all sorts of games, people outside playing football, people playing basketball, people at the arcades, doing crafts, their were people EVERYWHERE and we were all just having lots of fun!! #istillmissit #alittle #itsnotworththeabusetho
Anyways, when it was time to go to my grandparents, who were in the Order so I don’t know why they didn’t come… wait I know … the party wasn’t for the Order, it was just for Ortell’s family #hahahaha wait so we really were just ALL family….. that HUGE party with what seemed like the whole Order, was really just Ortell’s little fam #notsolittlewhenyouhave8wivespregnantthesameyear #8isOrtell #somanyfamilymarriedtoeachother #reallydidnooneseeaproblemwiththis #whywasthisportrayedasnormal #ohwellthepartywasfun anyways, my mom would track one of us siblings down and start the process of leaving!! I think it took at least 45 mins for my poor mom to leave these party’s… finding all the kids and losing one in the process!! I remember being found waiting for the others to be found, getting bored, and forget I’m supposed to stay in the found area, and wander off again!! I also remember being sent to go find siblings and getting distracted, and forget I was finding siblings so we could leave #idontknowhowweevergotanywhere but the promise of delicious desserts and pies at my grandmas house, the grandma whom we absolutely ADORED, usually helped motivate us to get found, and get in the van!!
This was before Black Friday shopping started happening on Thanksgiving!! So we could actually spend the evening at my grandparents house (moms side) until late into the evening. This side of the family was so small compared to the Daniels #15 side of the family party… we could actually be at a house rather than a warehouse, maybe there was about 30 of us there. I was my grandmas oldest granddaughter, from her 2nd oldest child, do you follow? So being the oldest, I saw the family grow and now it’s actually much bigger, but I guess it helped to keep the family smaller when the two older sisters married the same guy #onelessinlaw #itmakesmoresenseeveryday #notreally so we spent the evening at Papa’s and grandma’s house, ps. they never plural married so we did get a little exposure to normal life where both the spouses lived in the home … us grandkids ran around and played, while my grandma and the aunts looked at Black Friday ads, mapping their shopping route for the next day!!
Some years my grandma took me with her, and I got to be the one to chase down an item for her and bring it to her in the line…. she had this awesome strategy, and we’d cruise from store to store! I don’t know what the uncles did… there weren’t really in-law uncles, Daniel rarely came to my grandparents house even though he married two of their daughters, and the other sister who was married was a plural wife; so her husband was there if it was her “night”, the other aunts got married when I was in my teens, and I left shortly after! So for uncles there was …. well 3 uncles and Papa… one uncle was estranged from the family, he got kicked out of the order shortly after I was born for confronting Daniel and the leader Paul about how his sister, my mother, was treated by Daniel! We were taught to fear him, we saw him occasionally, sometimes he came but my grandpa made it clear he wasn’t welcome. We weren’t supposed to associate with him or love him, but my grandma welcomed him… and he just came in the house anyways! I secretly loved when my outside aunts and uncles would visit… I think I looked up to them… My other uncles left too in there teens, one returned and is now still in the order, but they were just teens when I was young… so there wasn’t a “guy” event happening just my Papa sitting in his chair …
I would say my grandparents dynamics resembled Everybody Loves Raymond, watching that show reminds me of being at grandmas house when I was younger!
We also would often play games, the moms joined us, I mean really these moms weren’t that much older then us 🙂 remember I am the oldest daughter of the 2nd oldest, and my mom was 16 when she had me… so the oldest Aunt was her older sister, who was maybe 18 years older than me… and the youngest aunt was younger than me… #justtogiveperspective we all hung out, we all had fun, and I don’t think I ever saw one person get abused at grandmas house. It truly became a safe haven for us, especially since Daniel never went there!
I spent my 8 year old Thanksgiving in foster care, and I remember that the foster parents were ritzier having the dinner catered! The food was good, but I spent the first courses in time-out because I popped the red cherry tomato in my mouth from the top of my salad before we said “GRACE” … #itwasdisrespectful #ineededtolearnmanors
The next Thanksgiving away from the order was at the age of 15 years-old… also a negative experience… but I guess who could hold a candle to 100s of family members running around with cousins and friends… my first Thanksgiving with my forever family was awesome!! It reminded me so much of the traditions I grew up with!!
The extended family get together with a big potluck dinner, tables up in the living room, and family everywhere! After the meal we played games and more games, I didn’t know what to expect for Thanksgiving so prior to the day I made plans to drive down and visit the family who I was living with before moving into my adoptive home! It was good for me to see how this family, who grew up in the Order had changed their thanksgiving tradition… there was still the Thanksgiving meal, but it was just different, yet still fun…. the older family and friends were upstairs while the kids in the basement! I liked seeing that there was still joy in new traditions… I had decided I was going to embrace my new families traditions the next year!!
My forever family rotated between my moms side and my dads side every other year for Thanksgiving. The food was always awesome, the family size was different, but didn’t matter we always played games the rest of the day until our bellies had room for desserts! #auntdebsapplecrisp #grandpaspotatoes #potatosnob #mmmm Everyone was always welcome, my family was truly the family that you felt like you were family when you were there! Oh, and I love this part, at the dinner table, in the quite noise of us stuffing our bellies, literally with stuffing haha, anyways we would all go around the table and say something we were thankful for that year. Of course there were the obvious answers, but my family would always dug deeper for the extra things to be grateful for. I seriously loved it, that I now have a grateful journal. Click HERE to see my first fave, and HERE for my next favorite gratitude journal. In fact, I think I need to give these as gifts this year….
Anyways, after getting married, I’ve been trying to figure out what is our traditions that we want to carry on with our girls! We usually attend both families Thanksgiving dinners, and try to spend a few hours at each home! Can I just say that my mother-in-laws stuffing is the first stuffing I have EVER liked, and not only do I like it but LOVE it. Never understood why soggy bread was good, and made to be a dish on purpose, but this stuffing is legit with cashews and sausage… #mymouthiswatering BUT here I am this year living away from family, and I truly don’t know how we will decide to spend Thanksgiving! We had a Thanksgiving away from family while living in the Caribbean, but didn’t even feel like Thanksgiving since really only the Americans were celebrating #americanholiday
I like to let my girls pick what we do, we’ve talked about cooking together, going bowling, going to the movies, but nothing is set in stone… and recently my thoughts have wandered to remembering all those who have left polygamy this past year, and facing their first holiday season… do they try to mimic the old traditions or start new ones?….. you just can’t fill the silence with that noise that used to be family!! Many often question if you made the right choice now that you’re lonely, you miss the good, it becomes nostalgic, you almost forget the bad!! You remember those small moments that kept you hanging in, and wonder if you could just show up to the family warehouse party.. would they notice you? Could you blend in? And you remember that leaving polygamy, leaving abuse means you lost everything… it’s rubbed in your face… like my uncle who just showed up anyways, he wasn’t welcome, he was treated badly… but is it worth it you think… if I go back just to visit, just to hug them all, they’re down the street, I know exactly where they all are…. even if I walked in the door just to see them for a moment before being kicked out …. is it worth it? What if they don’t kick me out… what if they’re normal people now and I can just bring my potluck dish to the party…. #whatif
When that black cloud of polygamy isn’t weighing you down everyday, you kinda forget how heavy it felt… how most days you could hardly breathe, that you were wishing for death, that you’d rather be in hell with the rest of the world then in heaven with the polyg’s … this happens to me too… you’re not alone, you do forget the bad, and sometimes think should I just go back… so many people do actually go back too… this is the power that polygamy tries to hold over you … “we’ve got your family, come back and give us your soul if you want to be with them again” I just can’t, I can’t go back and look at my younger siblings and the children in polygamy, letting them think that this organization is ok… that the abuse is ok, I can’t turn the other way while abuse happens!
I don’t think the adults, the mothers who claim to love their children, the older siblings who won’t leave because of their younger siblings needing them…. they do need you alright, but they need you to set an example and show them that abuse is not ok! I don’t think these mothers and siblings who protest this love realize that staying, and keeping those kids in that oppression is having a negative psychological effect on those kids. They need you to do the hard thing, to be the grown-up and protect them, to change the system of polygamy if you choose not to leave it. It unfortunate that leaving really means you lose that family, but those are their rules, I now have so much family and friends of all religions, cultures, ethnicity, etc… and the only ones I can’t see, or have to see in secret are those in polygamy. I have truly seen how controlling polygamy is, more than I ever could have seen when I was in it.
I left and went back when I was 13 years-old, and realized that staying and keeping quite was teaching my siblings that the abuse was ok…. in fact, so many kids you talk to from the order believe that their physical punishments are justified by their bad behavior, and they do not call their physical punishments abuse….. because it’s so normal to them, and the grownups who do nothing about it only reiterate to these impressionable children that it’s ok, and that they need to just be better behaved kids!! Yes even you moms who say “well I don’t spank my kids, and I don’t let my husband spank them, so not all of us in the order are abusive” #yayyou #bigthumbsup but do your kids see abuse? Do they hear the stories from friends at school? Are they witnessing it, and do they see you not doing anything about it because “we need to love and respect the leaders of the order” … you’re still teaching your daughter to be the perfect wife for a domestic violent relationship, you’re teaching those other kids you don’t speak up for, that the abuse that happens to them is OK… basically you can climb off your pedal stool and join the reputations of those you attached yourself too… #youarestillpartoftheproblem It would be nice to see these people who preach wanting to stay, to help make a difference from the inside, and I don’t mean a difference in controlling more, oppressing more, I mean empowering more!!
Photo by Jay Wennington
Anyways, it’s very natural for the holidays to be a struggle for anyone who’s had a life changing event since the prior holiday. The joy the holidays brings is still there, but there’s also that sadness and grief all over again that things will never be the same! Do you continue with the old traditions you had, or do you begin new ones? If you start new traditions does that make you’re heartless, does that mean you’re letting go? If you keep the old ones does that mean you’re hanging on to the past? Does it mean you’re doing it in honor of the person or people you’re missing? I guess it could mean all of these things right? It all depends what’s motivating your behavior! It depends are you rigid in keeping the tradition, or have a complete aversion to the tradition? Is it affecting how you emotionally cope with the holidays?
What parts of my traditions did I keep and which ones did I let go? Well, since us kids always got food from the food bank around the holidays, I have decided to donate food and time to the food bank each year as part of my tradition for Thanksgiving. This year, I was looking at all our pumpkins from Halloween, still intact, and found a blog post to turn those pumpkins into pumpkin desserts #yumm so I think my daughters are old enough to get them involved in the tradition of giving back. We plan to make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and take them to the homeless folk we see at the many corners here in Houston. I am thinking we are going to love this tradition going forward because we lovvvvve to cook, but can’t eat them all ourselves, and we will always have an abundance of pumpkins left over from our Halloween tradition.
The other traditions we have kept are of course family games, family fun, family time, just family, family, family, can you tell I am very family oriented… I don’t know if we will cook the Thanksgiving dinner or try a restaurant this year, but we will definitely have Thanksgiving food!!! #ilovefood My favorites are the chocolate mud pie, of course the dessert is listed first haha, the cranberry sauce over cream cheese, those mashed potatoes I love so much, a sweet potato casserole that I have tweaked the recipe to my perfection, and I guess the veggies don’t make my fave list haha, but that’s ok, I have them all the other days of the year! Aside from the delicious food, I mainly try to just focus on enjoying time with the people around me each year, and being present in whatever the day unfolds to be. Sometimes, I go Black Friday shopping just to remember my grandma and imagine she’s somewhere in the store waiting for me to grab the item, and sometimes I don’t go. Sometimes, I am with certain family, sometimes with other parts of my family, but overall, I just find someone who’s family, and spend the day with them. I try not to be rigid in my traditions, and embrace the new, while incorporating a little of the past, I found this Holiday Ideas for Families book, and I am ordering it now because I love the ideas of all year round traditions. Quality family has definitely become more important than quantity. If I had a big home, I would be making a huge meal and inviting everyone who needs a little family, even if they aren’t my family, I have learned family is who you make it to be, and some may just need you as family for the day. Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and know that each year, I am always thinking of all of you, those in the Order, my family out of the Order, my friends, the family I picked up along the journey of my life, everyone, all the wonderful people I know… have a blessed Thanksgiving and bless others this year!
