Breaking Up with Rockwell

By Kim Brassor

One Voice Evolving: Better You, Better World

Perhaps I’ll never outgrow, outrun, or outlive the need to enter communal spaces with an exit strategy and car keys in my hand.

Maybe the peace comes from accepting that, not fighting it, not shaming it, not turning it into a self-improvement project.

Just acknowledging the body I walk into every room with.

For years, I carried the hunger for a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving. The soft glow. The harmony. The clean, beautifully set, candle-lit table.

The people who knew how to love each other without leaving bruises.

And every November, I’d feel that same ache in my solar plexus—the place where fantasy meets history, where longing meets truth.

I kept trying to build a holiday I never had, with ingredients I was never given: a functional family, effortless connection, emotional fluency, warmth that didn’t cost me my voice.

Eventually, the tears made it clear: I wasn’t grieving a broken tradition. I was grieving a tradition that was never mine.

So… fuck Norman Rockwell.

Fuck the myth of the perfect table.

Fuck the silent suffering women do trying to manufacture a moment that only ever existed in a painter’s imagination.

My adult daughter and I circled together this year around the aching question of “when and where does it ever end?”

The answer, for us, came quietly: It ends where we stop pretending. It ends where we stop performing. It ends where we stop trying to heal the family by hosting it.

So this year, instead of orchestrating everyone else’s dream Thanksgiving, we’re choosing a new direction:

Pies to bake because let’s be honest, pie is the only reason anyone survives turkey. And Chinese takeout for cook’s choice.

Reclaiming the day with a new vision based on our familial realities and collective energy levels. Setting a pace that doesn’t lead to exhaustion and a plate where nobody needs to perform to be accepted.

A table with diversity, dirty dishes, cardboard containers, and our own laughter. Something real. Something ours. Something that sets the stage for healing hidden history.

This may be the best holiday ever.

Cheers!

—Kim