I’ve always considered it a blessing and a curse that Thanksgiving occurs mere weeks after election day. Just as local municipalities and the country at large are processing new directions and feelings are still raw, the cruelty of the calendar requires that we head home to face people who may feel very differently about the outcome. To salt the wound, those people are often the ones most skilled at getting under our skin. In other words: family.

The holiday may feel especially fraught at this moment of heightened political toxicity, mistrust, anger and fear. But the potential blessing is that, shortly after a polarizing political Super Bowl, we’re forced to reconnect.

My belief in the possibility of that reconnection stems from my own positive experience growing up in a household where

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