The Unchatter Story
It was the Friday after Thanksgiving in 2018 and I was vacuuming in my bare feet, tears streaming down my face. I had just taken a break from my frantic housecleaning to check Snapchat. It was brimming with updates from my family – the gleeful shrieks of my nieces and nephews, my brother dropping a monstrous turkey in the fryer, my sister-in-law’s attempt to amputate her finger while peeling potatoes. And all of it was happening 8,000 miles away while I was dusting my furniture. I snuffled for a bit, briefly considered dropping a cool mil on a plane ticket, then consoled myself with some therapeutic laundry sorting.
When I moved across the US to Cleveland right after university, spending the holidays away from my family became the norm. I grew accustomed to the simultaneous gratitude and longing that comes with celebrations far from home, and I spent many a Thanksgiving flavoring the fancy corn (top-secret family recipe) with salt and sadness. As my circle of humans expanded and my friends’ mothers got tired of setting an extra place for the resident country bumpkin, I started to host my own Friendsgiving celebrations. It was a chance to share my space, gather people together, and cook enough vittles to feed the entire state – three things that make my joy-o-meter go bonkers.
When I moved to New Zealand, I briefly considered foregoing a celebration altogether since Thanksgiving is a decidedly American holiday. But, being the militant observer of occasions that I am, I decided to keep the Friendsgiving tradition alive and couple it with a “no small talk” party. Just enough to kick away the lonelies, I figured. The invite list swelled to twenty-some people (all of whom I had promised a full Thanksgiving feast) and that leads us back to yours truly, alternately vacuuming and weeping with homesickness.
The housecleaning was the easy part. There were also several nights of way-past-my-bedtime planning and preparation poured into curating an evening full of sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and meaningful connection. In the end, it was a little more work and a heap more joy than I bargained for – and I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
On the evening of the gathering, there was a moment a few hours in when plates were empty, glasses were full, and everyone was snuggled cozily into conversation. I crept quietly into the edge of a serious-looking circle and sat, letting the murmur and warmth of the voices wash over me. They were talking about their spiritual upbringings, chortling over most embarrassing moments, and reflecting on their glorious and complicated relationships with their mothers.
There were humans in every fillable space – perched on couches and floors, lounging on beds, stretched out on rugs. Sometime after midnight, I walked into my bathroom and found six people huddled on the floor, locked in on each other. It was the moment I knew every minute of thought and toilet scrubbing was entirely worth it.
You know that feeling when you wake up and feel inexplicably, wildly happy but it takes a second to remember why? That’s what happened the morning after Friendsgiving when I stumbled out of my bedroom in a fog of joy and grinned madly at the rumpled paper crowns hooked on chairs, the stack of sticky plates, the eruption of glitter on the coffee table – all the gorgeous, chaotic remnants of a night gone very, very right.
At the encouragement of the gorgeous humans who were there on that soft spring evening, I took my dinner party experiment to the public with a trial event in February 2019. I’ll never forget the terror and joy of standing in front of a room full of expectant people, ready to make this small offering.
Now, here we are – a few years, many tears, a thousand pages of research, and one baby later, we’re still doing this connection thing. I say it at the end of every event and it’s always worth repeating: we wouldn’t be here without you.
Thank you for showing up again and again. Thank you for growing right along with us. Thank you for reminding us that humanity is gobsmackingly beautiful.
“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
– Fred Rogers