Thanksgiving at a wellness spa is a quiet rebellion against expectation. It asks you to set aside the clatter of a traditional holiday and consider a different kind of abundance. Divorce, meanwhile, has a way of reassigning meaning to dates on the calendar. Holidays, once tied to shared traditions and long-standing rituals, become unmoored.
This year, faced with the freedom of spending the holiday however, and wherever, I liked, I opted to create a new tradition, one that traded my family’s famous stuffing recipe, our favorite Cabernet, and inevitable arguments about anything, really, for clean food, clean air and intentional pause.
From the moment I arrived early Thanksgiving week to SHA Mexico, the second and newer location of the long-running longevity and optimization destination SHA Spain, the tone was set. SHA, which is set to open a third location, in Abu Dhabi, in 2027, is not a place for excess, but for clarity. The architecture, by Mexico City firm Sordo Madaleno, is minimalist; perched high above the Caribbean, its clean lines—intended to pay homage to the human genome—are seemingly designed to quiet the mind as much as the body. There is no lobby frenzy, no pressure to perform cheerfulness. Phones are discouraged. Schedules are precise. Days unfold according to a rhythm that belongs to someone calmer and more deliberate than I usually am.
The focus here is on long-term well-being; on living long, but more importantly, living well. Meals are plant-forward, nutritionally calibrated, and plated with almost ceremonial care. You eat slowly, partly because the food is beautiful, partly because mindfulness is encouraged, and partly because there is nowhere else you are supposed to be. Without the heaviness of excess, I found it easy to physically feel a sense of gratitude; to be thankful not because tradition dictated, but because my nervous system was on much-needed vacation from high alert.
Of course, the food’s just part of the appeal. Days at SHA are structured but spacious. Mornings might begin with sunrise yoga as the sky shifts pink over the water. Afternoons are filled with medical consultations, functional assessments, and treatments that feel less indulgent than illuminating. This is spa-as-information. I learned precisely how much inflammation my body is carrying, how much oxygen by body consumes during intense exercise, the levels of physiological stress I’m experiencing and how to bring them back to balance. A massage reveals where tension has taken up permanent residence. Breathwork exposes how shallow my breathing becomes when I’m bracing for change. Hydrotherapy leaves me buoyant, both literally and figuratively. Rest becomes not something I squeeze in, but the main event.
Choosing to spend Thanksgiving outside the usual family structure, whether alone or with a companion—there were a surprising number of couples there the same week I was—carries its own weight. But at SHA, solitude feels intentional rather than lonely. There is connection, just quieter. By the end of the week, the idea of a conventional Thanksgiving—crowded, loud, emotionally loaded—felt both familiar and distant. I remembered that holidays can be restorative rather than depleting, intentional rather than inherited. What if celebration didn’t require endurance? What if abundance didn’t mean excess? What if gratitude could coexist with loss?
I left SHA armed with a newfound enthusiasm for eating fewer animals and more plants; trying, at least, to cut out coffee; being precise and intentional with my supplements (versus, say, buying anything compelling that pops up in my Instagram feed); and, most of all, slowing down and really feeling whatever it was that came up. Spending Thanksgiving at a wellness spa didn’t reject the spirit of the holiday; rather, it distilled it, stripping away expectation and leaving me with something simpler and harder-earned: the ability to give thanks not for the life I thought I’d have, but for the one I’m actively learning to care for.
SHA Mexico
