Every year around this time, someone inevitably asks me what I'm grateful for. And every year, I have the same irreverent thought: What if gratitude isn't a feeling we muster on command, but a recognition of what's already regenerating through us?
Bear with me here.
You know how traditional Thanksgiving prep goes: acquire ingredients, follow recipe, produce outcome, collapse in tryptophan coma. Very extractive. Very monoculture. Very "harvest everything this season and pray the soil recovers."
But what if we approached the whole season the way we tend a Food Forest Garden?
In a regenerative system, nothing is just one thing. That turkey carcass becomes bone broth becomes minerals for next spring's garden.
The "failure" of the lumpy gravy teaches you about patience and whisking. Your aunt's political rant at dinner? Well, that's the nitrogen-fixer nobody asked for but the system apparently needed.
Here's what I'm noticing about inherent worth and wealth as we approach this season of supposed abundance:
Most of us have been taught that wealth is what we accumulate. But in living systems, wealth is circulation. The richest soil isn't the one hoarding nutrients — it's the one cycling them through roots, microbes, worms, fungi, and back again.
Your inherent worth isn't what you've achieved or produced or Instagram-storied. It's the fact that you're a regenerative living system. You take in experience, process it through all four layers of your being (hands, heart, head, Consciousness), and create something that feeds the larger web.
Even when you think you're failing. Especially when you think you're failing.
That's composting. And compost is where the real wealth lives.
The Invitation Nobody Asked For:
What if this Thanksgiving, instead of performing gratitude, you simply recognized one thing: You are already enough nutrient density to feed what wants to grow through you.
Not what you should be growing. Not what your family thinks you should harvest. What's already emerging in your particular microclimate, with your specific guild of support, in this exact season of your life.
Maybe that's a business pivot. Maybe it's finally saying no to the family dynamic that depletes you. Maybe it's recognizing that the "crisis" you're in is actually your system breaking up hardpan so deeper roots can finally reach water.
(Speaking of crisis: if you're in one right now and the idea of "grateful Thanksgiving feelings" makes you want to throw the green bean casserole at someone's head, the 6-Week Crisis Integration Intensive might be your compost pile.)
Sometimes we need concentrated support to turn breakdown into breakthrough. Sometimes we need someone to witness that what feels like failure is actually preparation.
Or maybe you're sensing something bigger — that you're ready to build an entire regenerative ecosystem, not just survive this season.
The Regenerative Leader Intensive is for visionary leaders and entrepreneurs who are done with monoculture leadership and ready to tend the food forest approach over a full growing year.
The Bottom Line Up Front:
You don't have to feel grateful. You don't have to produce abundance. You don't have to prove your worth by what's on the table.
You are the abundance. You're the whole damn ecosystem.
Now pass the cranberry sauce and stop apologizing for taking up space at your own table.
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