The term ‘thank you’ is a simple term that speaks in many volumes. It’s one of the first things we learn, as young children, and most of us say it several times a day, but there are many different emotional levels of the term ‘thank you’. There is the quick, in passing ‘thank you’ that you say to the person that does your dry cleaning. There is the happy ‘thank you’ you feel when you get a promotion. Then there is the deep, heartfelt ‘thank you’ when a firefighter saves a loved one from a burning building.With Thanksgiving approaching, there is a beauty in both thanks and giving as an action verb. It’s amazing to thank the universe through the action of giving. Some call it charity, some call it karma yoga, or giving back. Whatever the term, it’s the intent of saying ‘thank you’ with your actions and wanting nothing in return. This makes giving such a beautiful thing. This Thanksgiving I’m celebrating first by giving back. I will feed people in need, before I sit down with my own family. I will remember to give thanks for all of my blessings (both seen, and unseen). I’m so thankful for my knowledge of beauty, that I’m also donating a beauty basket at the location where I’m serving food. The products are from other like-minded companies that pride themselves on giving back. I just want to say thank you to them, and share their company giving efforts:
Josie Maran– Empowers Moroccan women by purchasing their Aragon oil from all-female cooperatives in Morocco. These co-ops give women of rural Morocco a steady income, a fair wage, decent working conditions, and literacy and other education classes.
Burt’s Bees– This was one of the first companies I worked with over 10 years ago, as a makeup artist. I always loved the founder Roxanne Quimby, who bought up tens of thousands of acres of Maine’s North Woods to donate it as a national park.
Shea Tera Organics– For over a decade, Shea Terra Organic’s founder Tammie Umbel has been helping native Africans to preserve their wildlife habitats by sharing their indigenous, healing ingredients with the world.
I have to admit in the past the actual holiday Thanksgiving was always a turn off to me. I love the concept of sitting down with family and giving thanks over food, but because the concept is based on a dinner between The Pilgrims, and The Native Americans (and we all know what happened to The Native Americans) I’ve shunned away from it for almost 20 years. I don’t want to get into politics about Thanksgiving in this blog post, I wanted to share how I turned my negative feelings into beauty.
Last year my daughter and I served to people effected by Hurricane Sandy. You can read more here. I wish everyone a great day of thanks and giving this Nov 28th.