In the past, the days leading up to and including Thanksgiving Day used to be both simple and yet complex. For my family, it was an annual event when siblings and family would fly to Dallas. The numerous trips to the airport. Every bedroom being filled.

On Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving as the turkey was being brined, we would frequent a local Mexican food restaurant. Sometimes as many as 16 or more. There were times when I simply looked around at this family with love, with wonder, with puzzlement … this wacky, dysfunctional, mostly loving family. And yet looking back now, I realize that I never had a true understanding of the magic and wonder of “family.”

Thanksgiving Day would see my much more athletic brother run in the local Turkey Trot. An event my son, daughter and I participated in once as well. And then returning home to start the cooking, and drinking, and football.

Thanksgiving is so much about our senses … tasting, feeling, listening and particularly smelling incredible aromas.  The turkey roasting, homemade cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and all sorts of other food to fill the stomach and satisfy all senses. Fragrant candles lit in each room.

There would be full plates and loud rooms, mismatched chairs pulled from every corner of the house, the laughter of children rising above the noise like a bright ribbon in the air. At times, Morgan’s laugh being the loudest of all.

And then … as this message was channeling through me, I was distracted and then intrigued by the squealing laughter of children outside. I walked outside and saw 5 – 6 children playing in a small front yard about 3 houses away. This was surprising since the neighborhood I inhabit consists of many, many blue hairs, elderly people … geezers if you will. Nonetheless, the children’s sweet, innocent laughter rang loud and joyous. And it reminded me of that which once was.

Now, nine years have passed since anorexia took Morgan from us, and for me, the holiday will never be simple again.

Yet, with time, grief evolves and has its own way of teaching a person how to see … how to look beyond absence and despair and perhaps, if you’re lucky enough, to discover the blessings that remain, even when they come wrapped in sorrow.

Some people say time heals. I don’t believe that. Time doesn’t heal; what it does is carve space. In that space, memory begins to settle gently instead of cutting sharply. I no longer remember only the hospital rooms, the fear, the battles we lost all passing as if in slow motion. I am blessed to be able to still distinctly remember Morgan’s humor, her stubborn streak, her compassion for every stray creature that crossed her path. I remember her kindness … and that is a blessing.

Memory is what lets me keep being her daddy, long after the world perhaps stopped seeing me as one.

After Morgan’s death, I immersed myself in the eating disorder community. I needed to understand. I thought my assistance would be welcomed. I needed to make sure that no other parent stood where I now stood, at the quiet cliff edge of the unthinkable.

Throughout my journeys, I have met brave parents, resilient survivors, clinicians who cared with their whole hearts, and advocates who fought every day against the silence that kills. People who have inspired me. And humbled me with their intelligence and grace. These people became my extended family. Their courage is a blessing I name out loud.

But to be honest, and Thanksgiving is a time for honesty, there is another side. A side that overwhelms me still. The corruption, the unchecked egos, the nonprofit politics, the professional turf wars, the bizarre stupidity that leaves vulnerable people without the care they desperately need. After nearly a decade in this world, I have seen how dysfunction can metastasize around suffering, how institutions can forget the very people they were created to serve.

Sometimes it feels like trying to clean the ocean with a teaspoon.

And yet, these hard lessons too, teach gratitude. Because it reminds me why I stay. It reminds me that my daughter’s life deserves more than resignation. It reminds me that the brokenness of a system does not erase the goodness of individuals. It reminds me that meaningful change, even when slow, is still possible. And that hope, no matter how bruised, is still a blessing.

Grief gave me a mission I never asked for. No parent should ever have to become an expert in eating disorders because their child died from one. But here I am. And on my best days, I believe that purpose is a gift … and a blessing.

I have learned to speak loudly for those who are silenced by shame. I have learned to ask hard questions, even when the answers are inconvenient for people in power. I have written articles with a tone that is off putting. I have made dear friends. And others have made themselves staunch enemies. That alone has surprised me. After all, aren’t we all working toward the same goal?

Valuable lessons are learned each day. One of the most important lessons I learned is that love can outlive a child, not because it replaces them, but because it honors them.

Every time a family finds help, every time a young person reaches recovery, every time someone feels less alone because of something I may have shared or that Morgan provided to them … this is my daughter’s legacy. These are her blessings.

There is an empty chair at my Thanksgiving table. It will always be empty. But every year, that space teaches me something new.

It teaches me tenderness. It teaches me to pay attention to the fragile, invisible battles others carry. It teaches me that gratitude does not require a life without heartbreak; it only asks that we keep our hearts open anyway.

Some years, that feels possible. Some years, it doesn’t. But the blessing is in the trying.

If I could give thanks for only one thing, it would be love. I am grateful that love is not undone by death. I am grateful that being Morgan’s daddy did not end the day she took her last breath. I am grateful that grief, painful as it is, is simply love in its most honest form.

This Thanksgiving, I give thanks for my daughter’s life, for those young people she helped, for the people fighting the good fight in a broken system, for the parents who keep going, for the survivors who refuse to be defined by their illness, and for the unseen blessings that rise from sorrow like morning light after a long night.

Nine years later, the gratitude is softer. More complicated. More real.

But it is there. And that, too, is a blessing.