Never Underestimate the Power of a Sparkly Sweater

Thistle Farms Residential graduates have proven over and over again that it's impossible to throw a party better than one of ours. We come together throughout the year to celebrate and support each other in wellness and adversity, but none of these gatherings are as dear to us as our annual Graduate Christmas Party.

We’ve worn drab prison uniforms and ill-fitting hand me downs. We’ve eaten hospital food and other people’s leftovers. We’ve felt the sting of what trauma and addiction have taken from us.

But now...

We arrive at this annual party in sparkly holiday sweaters and battery-powered necklaces, we make our way through a buffet of our favorite, most special foods, and we exhaust ourselves laughing and dancing. We look at each other and marvel at the fact that we made it through to the other side of hopelessness and give that buffet line another look, just in case we missed something the first (or let's be honest, second) time, before taking another turn on the dance floor. The abundance of food and laughter and glitter only scratch the surface of the wealth we know as graduates of a community whose guiding principle is that love, in all of it’s glowing holiday glory, has the capacity to heal us.

And that after years of invisibility, nothing says “I’m here” like a sparkly holiday sweater.

#LoveHeals