November opens the season of descent — the long exhale after harvest when the earth quiets, and we’re invited to do the same.
This month on Old Ways for Modern Days, we’re exploring what it means to practice honest gratitude— the kind that tells the whole story, holds both beauty and harm, and roots thanks in truth and reciprocity. I am going to explore these themes this month in a series of essays.
In this first essay, I reflect on the ancient partnership between sacrifice and gratitude — how one completes the other, and how both can guide us back into right relationship with our ancestors, the land, and each other.
Light a candle, pour something warm to drink, and read slowly — this one asks to be felt as much as understood.
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November has always been a month of reckoning.
The fields are bare, the hearth is full, and the air hums with endings.
It’s the hinge between abundance and scarcity, the pause that asks us to look at what remains after the harvest — and what it cost to get here.
We call it the season of gratitude, but in the old ways, it was just as much the season of sacrifice.
In the old ways, sacrifice and gratitude were two halves of the same act—an exchange between humans and the unseen world, between ancestors and descendants, between truth and discomfort—and owning it with courage.
To give thanks meant to give something back.
The first fruits, the choicest cuts, a portion of the harvest returned to the earth or the gods.
Not as loss, but as reciprocity.
Not because we were unworthy, but because we understood that every gift carries responsibility.
The Cost of Forgetting
Somewhere along the line, we lost that balance. Gratitude became a sentiment instead of a practice. A social media prompt. A list we make to feel better.
And “I’m sorry” lost its teeth too— divorced from reparations, from the act of restoring what was broken.
We learned to apologize without changing. To say “thank you” without giving back.
But real gratitude is messy. It makes room for the whole story: the good and the bad, the inheritance and the harm. It’s the courage to say, I was wrong. I’m letting go of something I held dear that was harmful. I’m working to do better.
It’s that moment when you swore something was true—but then received new information and had the humility to admit you’ve changed your point of view.
That, too, is sacrifice: the offering of certainty, the laying down of ego for the sake of truth.
Honest Gratitude
Honest gratitude doesn’t come from perfection. It comes from participation.It asks us to stay in relationship—with our ancestors, our communities, the land beneath our feet—even when those relationships are complicated.
When we practice honest gratitude, we stop pretending that blessings arrive without cost.
We remember that every comfort we enjoy was built on the labor, loss, and love of those who came before. We see that we are both beneficiaries and stewards, both heirs and repairers.
This kind of gratitude demands courage. It might ask you to offer something you’ve clung to:
a belief, a bias, a silence, a comfort.
It might mean saying, “I was wrong.”
It might mean giving back more than you thought you could.
But that’s what keeps the world in balance.
That’s how the circle stays whole.
A Small Practice
This week, as you light your evening candle or prepare your meal, whisper one truth that’s hard to hold—something you’ve learned or unlearned recently.
Name it as an offering.
Then speak one thing you’re truly grateful for—not because it’s easy, but because it’s honest.
This is the alchemy of November:
Sacrifice becomes gratitude.
Gratitude becomes repair.
May your thanks this season be brave enough to tell the whole story.
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If this reflection stirs something in you, you’ll find more to explore inside the Old Ways for Modern Days Library:
• This month’s Seasonal Guide on the history and folklore of November (& accompanying podcast episode)
• The Ritual for Honoring Ancestral Resilience & Healing, which pairs beautifully with the themes in this essay
• Sacred Foods Guides on Old World Late-Autumn Fruits and Acorn Magic — ancestral teachings on nourishment and transformation
Everything—free and exclusive—is gathered for you to read, listen, and remember.
Check it all out here>> https://www.patreon.com/posts/november-2025-of-142717133
May your gratitude this season be brave enough to tell the whole story.
Related Posts:
November: Sacrifice & Gratitude
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