An “Eat, Pray, Love” Thanksgiving in Berlin

Don’t feel like reading? Here, I’ll read it to you

I watched the movie “Eat, Pray, Love” my senior year of college when I started feeling really stuck. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, essentially a woman finds that she is in crisis. She’s unhappy in her marriage. She doesn’t know what she believes. She doesn’t want to fulfill the conventional path of everyone around her. So, she leaves. She gets divorced and goes off to travel and find herself. I remember thinking I feel like that. I want to do that.

At the time I watched the movie, I found myself in a similar position as her in the beginning. I looked at Liz Gilbert and saw myself. Or, what I feared would become of myself. I needed to be on my own and I needed to explore. But just like Liz’s life, it fell apart first.

If you haven’t seen the movie watch the trailer here

And watch the Thanksgiving scene here

When I was in Rhodes, I met a growing group of people who picked up new friends to join the pack everywhere they went. They were planning to have a reunion in Berlin at the end of November with all the people they’d met on their travels over the past few months. Originally, I was supposed to go back to the states by this time but decided to extend my trip and venture to Germany.

Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated in Germany. Nor is it celebrated in Greece or Australia or anywhere that anyone else was from (besides my fellow Americans Adri & Audrey.) However, our holiday hosts, The Motoshige’s, had lived in the states for a time and adopted the holiday in their home.

It was cozy and warm. We had a full smorgasbord of all the thanksgiving foods you could think of. We sat around the table and said what we were thankful for. I looked around the table of friends I had known for a matter of weeks or days (some only hours)and recognized how comfortable I felt with each of them. As if I really knew them for years. Damn, I thought, this really is an Eat, Pray, Love thanksgiving. I hadn’t set out for it; it just…happened. Although I was 4,500 miles from the place I had spent this holiday every year prior, I felt at home.

There’s something really special about the family you choose. They didn’t have to welcome me in or get excited for me to arrive or make a bed for me to stay in their home. They didn’t even have to invite me in the first place.

Thanksgiving in Berlin was a full-circle moment for me. I saw Liz Gilbert in myself, but more importantly, I saw myself in myself. I was starting to have a better grasp on who I was and the fact that I had value. I was able to see that people would choose to have me around not because we had been in each other’s lives for years, but because of who I was. This low level of confidence I had in myself to be someone that other people wanted in their life rose significantly. I am eternally thankful for my Thanksgiving in Berlin and the people I spent it with.

They say pictures are worth 1,000 words, and I think these ones are.