Start a beautiful new Thanksgiving tradition with these simple and heartfelt activities: a poem before your meal and a Heart Map after.

Before Your Meal

What better way to begin your Thanksgiving meal than with a poem of thanks? May I suggest this beautiful poem, On Waking, by the late Irish poet and philosopher, John O’Donohue.

Read it aloud before your meal, and invite everyone around the table to fill in the blank: I give thanks for ____

On Waking

I give thanks for arriving
Safely in a new dawn,
For the gift of eyes
To see the world,
The gift of mind
To feel at home
In my life,
The waves of possibility
Breaking on the shore of dawn,
The harvest of the past
That awaits my hunger,
And all the furtherings
This new day will bring.

—John O’Donohue

After Your Meal

Invite everyone to create their own Gratitude Heart Map. All you need to provide is a print out for each guest (FREE when you subscribe to my emails!) and some colored pencils or whatever art supplies you have on hand.

Wishing you and yours a very Happy Thanksgiving!

— Georgia