We spoke that night not like survivors performing triumph for donors, but like adults who had built language sturdy enough to hold what happened to us without collapsing under it.
No one asked whose family was on which side of the table.
At Thanksgiving that year, I did something I had thought about for months and nearly talked myself out of as too sentimental.
I hosted dinner.
Not a corporate dinner. Not a donor dinner. Not one of the glacially elegant meals where everyone knows which vineyard produced the wine and no one says what they mean. A real dinner. Loud and overabundant and impossible to curate fully.
I invited former foster youth from the foundation network who had nowhere else to go, along with a handful of mentors and staff who understood the spirit of the evening. My chef nearly fainted when I requested that the menu include not only refined holiday dishes but also several unapologetically comforting, almost chaotic additions suggested by the guests themselves: baked mac and cheese, sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, spicy greens, a pie that looked homemade even though it was assembled by people with culinary awards.