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Morning — Clay here.

With Thanksgiving landing today, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the “good old days” never announce themselves. They don’t show up with a spotlight or a soundtrack. They feel ordinary while they’re happening… until one day you realize they weren’t.

And funny enough, that ties right back to Monday’s topic — how we’re so quick to downplay or edit what we’re feeling. We rush past the very moments and emotions that actually matter.

Let’s go. 🔥

The Fuel behind The Spark:

Why Do Men Get All the Emotional Homework?

I’ve gotten a lot of positive responses to Monday’s newsletter, so I thought I’d take a minute to explain what inspired it.

There’s a guy in the men’s-work space I follow occasionally — he comes from that “New Masculine” angle. You know the type: lots of talk about “holding space,” but somehow no one ever talks about anyone holding space for men.

Anyway, he posted a 10-slide carousel on Instagram. The whole thing was a step-by-step guide through the classic scenario:

Wife talks about her day → husband tries to fix it → wife gets upset because she “just wanted him to listen.”

And it took ten full slides to explain the “proper protocol” for navigating that emotional minefield — basically, how to respond to a woman’s feelings in the exact, correct, socially approved way.

Then I saw a comment that stopped me:

“Can we just tell these women to get over themselves? If they want to talk, just say that — why do men need a treasure map to give the perfect emotional response?!”

And honestly?
I thought, “The guy’s not wrong.”

We have slides, diagrams, workshops, books, entire brands dedicated to teaching men how to understand women’s emotions — how to validate, how to mirror, how to listen “properly,” how to respond without responding “the wrong way.”

But flip the script?

There are almost zero books, carousels, or coaching programs teaching women how to understand men’s emotional wiring.

Nope. The burden lands entirely on men to translate, soften, sanitize, and reshape their emotional lives into something that fits someone else’s preferences.

And the more I thought about it, the more it felt like an unfair burden for men to shoulder alone. Not because women are out here demanding perfection — most women don’t actually feel this way about their partners at all. It’s more that the culture around emotions — psychology, education, social media, therapy talk — keeps reinforcing this idea that men need to be retrained, while women get to stay exactly as they are.

And that’s what got this whole Spark rolling.

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The Family Table Moves Eventually

For most of my life, Thanksgiving lived at my parents’ house. That was the center of gravity — me, my brother, my sisters, our spouses, all our kids running around, the noise, the football, the cousins who’d drop in, an aunt or an uncle drifting through with a story we’d all heard a dozen times.

But over the last couple of years, something has quietly shifted.

The holiday started happening at our house.

At first, it was practical — one year, my mom was recovering from an illness; the next, knee surgery; and then just… life catching up. Hosting went from being her joy to being something that took a little too much out of her. So we took it on to give her a break.

But here’s the part I didn’t expect:

I kind of like it.

There’s something meaningful about stepping into the role your parents once held. About becoming the house where people gather. About carrying on the same traditions you grew up with — just from the other side of the table.

It’s a reminder that family roles shift over time, and that’s not something to resist. It’s something to embrace. It means the family is still moving, still growing, still showing up for one another.

This Thanksgiving, I’m grateful for that — for the chance to carry a little of the weight my parents carried for decades. For the chance to make space for everyone else. For the reminder that seasons change, responsibilities shift, and sometimes the most meaningful moments are the ones you didn’t plan on.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Quote of the Week

Every year, this line hits a little harder.

Most of us rush through the moments that end up mattering the most — the crowded living rooms, the familiar noise, the ordinary days with the people we love. We treat them like routine while they're happening, only to realize later they were the good old days the whole time.

Thanksgiving has a way of reminding us to pause, look around, and notice what’s right in front of us — the moments we’ll be glad we didn’t overlook. The moments we’ll someday call “the good ones.”

Until next time—
Keep the fires burning,
— Clay

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Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

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