Thanksgiving... Ugh!

[Susanna]

Hey, Brizzo--this will by my first gluten-free T-giving, too (probably true for a lot of folks here). Sheesh, the holidays can be so hard--families can be difficult (and not always very understanding), and there's such a cultural and emotional connection to food in general, but even more so around the holidays with all the traditional (gluten-riddled) recipes. Plus, if you've just recently gotten off of gluten, you're probably still grieving it--we all go/went through a grieving process when we had to give it up--I was constantly sad about it the first 4 mos., and I'm intermittently sad about it now, but I'd say the first 6 mos was by far the worst. So, I'm bracing myself for the holidays to be tough this year.

My strategy for the upcoming holidays is to do the cooking myself, or if I'm going to someone's house, I'll bring a couple of delicious dishes to share that I can eat, because not participating at all, or being hungry is the most isolating thing about celiac for me. I'll trust that the people who care enough about me to spend holiday time with me will understand my dietary needs (they wouldn't get offended with a diabetic for refusing a sugary dessert, right? Then they'll accept that I just can't eat their stuffing and pie). I'll accept ahead of time that I'll have to do a lot of explaining (it's my job to advocate for myself and explain my situation to them--not their job to figure it out), and that it will be hard to be around some of my old favorite dishes--but lucky for me, I'll have some of my new favorites along. Every time I look at a beautiful food I wanna eat but can't, I'll glare at that food and mentally say to it "You can't hurt me anymore." (for me, that helps get rid of the wanting and being sad). If some callous jerk treats me poorly over my celiac-ness, I'll tell myself that THEY have the problem, not me. And most of all, I'll remind myself of how THANKFUL I am that I'm feeling better than before I went gluten-free.

(Not trying to be preachy, just trying to brace myself for the holidays coming up, don't ya know.)