Grief, Gratitude, And Getting Up

The holidays arrive with clashing energies: joy, noise, and the quiet ache of who is missing. This episode sits right in that tension. We open with gratitude, football, and hot coffee, then slide into real life: craft fairs, farm chores, and the surprise of adding another English bulldog after swearing we were done. The warm chaos is more than color. It mirrors how family pulls us forward even when grief tries to hold us still. The mix of humor and confession sets the tone for a larger question: how do we carry the weight of legacy while living our own life in the present tense.

The heartbeat here is a second anniversary of a father’s passing. Grief shows up as self-doubt, creeping through broken fence rails and a to-do list too scary to write. Anyone who’s lost a parent knows this: the quiet metrics we use to judge ourselves multiply in the silence. A father who ran a business, kept land, raised a family—that becomes a moving target. The episode explores imposter syndrome, the way overwhelm snowballs when we avoid naming our tasks, and the subtle shame of not feeling the same spiritual “signs” that others in the family feel. That gap becomes its own kind of missing.

Then something shifts. A medium’s reading for Mom layers detail upon detail—first dates, favorite songs, the sudden surge of a TV’s volume, a Christmas stocking found hours before. The specificity matters because it breaks cynicism. Validation invites softness. It opens a door to try something even harder: rewatching a funeral tribute that’s been avoided for two years. The body keeps score; the stomach twists; the tears surge. And it turns out grief isn’t a chapter we finish. It’s a language we learn to speak without letting it drown out the rest of our life.

The dream is the crux. A propane truck, a bill, panic, and the familiar thud of a father’s boots on the stairs—then the look. No lecture, just the charge: get up. That scene distills the larger message: grief wants us to lock in yesterday, but love wants movement. The dream answers a hidden question—am I still making you proud?—with a nonverbal yes that demands action. We talk about practical hope: writing the list, asking for help, honoring signs without chasing them, and letting legacy guide rather than judge. The takeaway is simple and hard: we owe them our life, not our paralysis.

As Thanksgiving nears, the episode returns to gratitude with teeth. Gratitude for memories that still teach, for work that keeps hands busy when hearts are heavy, for community that buys local and keeps dreamers afloat. There’s a call to choose presence: say the names, play the song, tell the story, pass the food, hug the toddler, and notice the eagle when it arcs above the road. Grief stays, but it doesn’t get the last word. We do. We choose to live, to grow through what we go through, to carry both laughter and loss to the same table, and to keep getting up, together.