https://secretspirits.com/2025/12/02/thanksgiving-holiday-reflections-svadhyaya-or-self-study/
Welcome. How was your holiday?
For today’s episode, let’s employ one of our most valuable tools, the tool of Svadhyaya (Yoga Ethics) or “Self-Study”. Together, we will review the events of the holiday, the holiday weekend, and reflect on our emotions, our reactions, our behaviors and OUR choices. Recall the mission of Secret Spirits, to support the wives, partners, girlfriends of addicts and alcoholics – to guide YOU toward your own awakening. To illuminate the truth and demonstrate a better way.
With that, let’s dive in.
First, let’s ensure we are ready for self-reflection.
The holiday originated in 1621, a harvest feast between the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag tribe. The Plymouth colonists struggled through their first year; the Wampanoag people helped them by sharing valuable knowledge of the land and its resources.
When the colonists had their first successful harvest, they held a feast to celebrate and give thanks. The Wampanoag people were invited to share in this three-day harvest festival, which included deer, fowl, seafood and other foods.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on the last Thursday of November. Of course, we could go deeper into the history of the holiday, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to continue on our own journey of awakening.
After reviewing the brief overview of the history of the holiday of Thanksgiving, a reminder of the purpose of the celebration.
I have some questions to kick off our episode of self-reflection. For today, I will first pose the question before providing my own reflective response.
I’ll share how I feel. I am relieved to have navigated this first holiday of the holiday season. It wasn’t as smooth or effortless as I would have liked. That’s why today’s exercise in self-reflection is so important to me. I want to identify the pitfalls in my behaviors, moods, and expectations and course-correct for the coming Christmas holiday.
I had trouble managing timing on the Thanksgiving holiday. I wanted to make a beautiful french pastry to contribute to the family meal. I had this vision in my head of arriving with a somewhat exotic pastry in hand as my contribution. I thought making the dish would be a bonding moment for my daughter and me.
I failed to read the directions for all the components, and my pastry dough was frozen when I needed to assemble it. While trying to troubleshoot that aspect, I became rushed and sloppy. I through the dish together in a hurry and was so displeased with its appearance. I refused to bring it as an offering to the meal.
I can see now how that was a decision in DIRECT OPPOSITION to the meaning of the holiday. Not the example I am striving to set for my children.
(deep breath) This is a complex question for me at this moment. I found myself feeling very grumpy before the Thanksgiving dinner. In reflection, I can see how my feelings of discourse were directly tied to the expectations I had of my husband’s behaviors. A phantom limb sort of reaction, a deep sense of repetitive behaviors looming at the evening’s Thanksgiving dinner table.
I expected my husband’s ability to “cope” with being surrounded by HIS family to be challenged. And guess what, I was right. He failed to cope in a healthy manner. He has admitted to smoking his “vape” (against my house rules) the night of the Thanksgiving dinner. In reality, I believe he engaged in his disease.
I believe he took more of his prescription medication than he is directed to by his team of physicians and psychiatrists. This is something that, now that my kids are back in school for the day, I have time to ruminate on, and consider what tools are available to me.
If you have been listening to this podcast for several weeks, you may have gleaned that my husband is living separately from the kids and me. He is in a sober living environment, where he is drug and alcohol tested regularly.
So my first call this morning, after school drop off was to the family coach at his sober living environment, to alert them to my beliefs of his behaviors, and request testing for specific types of use.
After placing that call, I release any responsibility or thought on the subject. I give that to the team in place, and know that if my husband is indeed abusing his prescriptions (as I suspect he is, and how I have observed him to have behaved in the past), then my only option is to enforce further protections around the kids and me.
In her book, Marriage on the Rocks, Janet Geringer Woititz states; “What about the children? They are the most vulnerable of all. They are victims, and they are powerless. They are dependent and defenseless. They know no other way of life…We communicate to them what our values are, and they pick them up as their own. If we are unclear, they will be unclear.”
That said, for my kids, this Thanksgiving holiday, they observed my husband’s appearance looking “off”. His eyes appeared to be glazed over after the dinner. He couldn’t sit at the dinner table with his family, so he anxiously wandered around the kitchen and the kids’ area. He asked repetitive questions to topics that we had previously discussed.
And my reaction? I was GRUMPY, I was angry that he was going to “ruin the holiday” for the rest of us.
The truth is, this entire scenario is and was PREDICTABLE.
My husband, a person who suffers from a severe and persistent mental illness, had a PREDICTABLE coping mechanism. Even though he has been sober the past few months, it doesn’t mean that he is infallible.
Where I feel validated in my anger is this. My husband COULD HAVE got up and left the dinner. He could’ve said, “This is too triggering for me, I need to go to the sober house or a meeting”. He also COULD have woken the next day, called me and admitted to his shortcomings. Instead, I observe him repeating his pattern of ruthlessly hiding his behaviors.
And that is the space where I find THE TRUTH.
The truth is, LOTS of people struggle during the holidays.
The only way to enact CHANGE is to be the change. To make the FIRST RIGHT DECISION.
And my husband didn’t do that this weekend. And I find that very concerning and troubling.
Truthfully, when I consider his sobriety, it has to be black and white. In fact, its one of the ONLY things (at least that I can think of) that is in fact black and white.
He is either stone cold sober OR in active addiction.
There is no longer any space for the consideration of things like “California sober”, or tiptoeing SO close to the line that it gets blurred.
Well, as I mentioned, I called the people who are shrouding me with safeguards. I asked them to be vigilant. I asked for extra drug testing, testing that would be impossible for him to evade.
We have couples therapy this week, where I will address the behaviors I observed. And that’s where I stand at this moment in time. It’s not the most comfortable place to be. I often feel like I’m living in limbo, some space between being a married couple and being divorced.
I trust that this is the exact space where I need to be in this moment. Learning, growing, and observing. And that’s where I will continue to be until I can find peace in some direction.
In broader terms, where are you in this journey?
Is your partner in active addiction? How did you manage the Thanksgiving holiday?
Is your partner sober? What did the holiday bring to your household?
As an ever-present reminder, YOU, ME, WE are never alone in this. Support, help, a listening ear is always available. You just need the courage to reach out your hand, and ask for help.
XOXO, Anonymously Becks
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