In keeping with the season, our team member Phoebe offers a Gleeful reflection on gratitude.
It’s autumn here in Providence, Rhode Island, and the cool air, crisper than a fresh-popped collar, provides the clarity to think about the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. There’s a lot to be grateful for at Glee Gum this year.
With the unbelievable support of friends, family, and community, we broke ground on a new space. Once a gas station (complete with a castle-like turret!), the property had been abandoned for over thirty years and had fallen into disrepair. A talented crew of architects, contractors, painters, solar panelists, volunteers, and more helped us to renovate it into our new, solar-powered headquarters. We got the chance to construct an organic garden with raised beds in the adjacent vacant lot, too.
We’ve seen several beloved members of the Glee Team move out to the West Coast to embark on new adventures this year, and we have welcomed new faces. Our founder Deborah’s dream of making a natural gum pop also came true this year, and Glee Gum Pops finally hit store shelves (and trick-or-treaters’ Halloween baskets).
There’s more, of course. Even deeper run roots of gratitude for the workers who tap the rainforest trees for the chicle in our gum base; those who farm the rice or harvest the birch bark that goes into making our sweeteners; and everyone who helps at every step of the way in bringing our gum from tree to Glee.
Thanksgiving’s not an easy holiday. We count ourselves among the many who approach it, consciously or unconsciously, with anxiety– about eating too much, or spending too much, or the potential challenges of time with family, or the logistics of cooking and traveling and coordinating schedules. On a day that’s about recognizing abundance, we’re afraid of overdoing it (or under-doing it).
Our hope for you and all of us is that we can, for just one day, release our expectations of needing to do more, be more, earn more, have more. Our hope for you and all of us is that we find the good this Thanksgiving– in our food, in our lives, and in each other. (And if you do happen to over-indulge, well, that’s why we make Sugar-Free Refresh-Mint Glee).
Let us know how you bring Glee to your Thanksgiving table this year (we’d love to see pictures, too). And THANK YOU, as always, for your support. It is thanks to you (and what you chew) that we are able to do what we do!
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