Every year on Thanksgiving morning I have a tradition of listening to Arlo Guthrie’s ‘Alice’s Restaurant Massacree‘ as I cook the family feast. It brings me back to my childhood roots and by harkening back to the great American tradition of dropout culture.

I was born on a commune in the Ozarks in 1975. The place we lived didn’t have running water or electricity. Soon after I was born my mother left the scene and headed back down to New Orleans to live with her family. My birth father did not join her and they divorced shortly after. She raised me as a single parent until she remarried a few years later.

These decisions changed our lives forever and I can’t help but thinking at times about what my life would have been like if we hadn’t taken the road back to civilization. It’s just one of the many “what ifs” in my life but it’s a very potent one. The resonance of the failed utopias of the 60s and 70s are part of who I am. It’s part of my origin story.

Happy Thanksgiving

This year I’m thankful for all the decisions, good and bad, that got me to where I am today, right here at this moment. It feels good to live and breathe and stand in my shoes, in my unique life.

I’m thankful for my family, my friends, my job, my home, my health, and for love above all.