My own healing is progressing each day. The holidays have always been a challenge for me. As a teacher, I remember being in my classroom on the eve of Christmas Eve some years, leaving me in a spent mess of wrapping and tinsel as I tried to ready a Christmas for my own family, while sending little ones home with handmade gifts for theirs. Emotionally draining in the past, this year, I choose to celebrate differently. Savored in little bits, the true meaning of Christmas is occupying my thoughts.
So far, it’s working, with a little help from my friends. Yesterday, the sweetest card came in the mail. The first Christmas card to Oliver and me, ours and ours alone. It’s from a dear heart friend that I have yet to meet and hug. She and I share a deep and abiding love of our Winterpast, it belonging first to her parents. Her memories are of days past, mine are forming every new day. Christmas is remembered differently for her, as her mom decorated her home with cheer. Her memories of meals and holidays linger here. I hope that when we do meet, she approves of the way I am honoring her mom’s love of home as I make Winterpast my own.
In my holiday healing, I’ve been holding what has scared and scarred me in an emotional bear hug, inhaling the essence of the pain while accepting that it can’t hurt me any deeper. I have many ghosts of Christmases past. Memories of those lost at Christmas time, like my beloved Grandmother, gone on December 23, 1981. Loss sneaks in like a thief and can cloud a time of year that holds the promise of birth, life, and happiness. It takes a conscious mind to choose happiness when the sadness of loss takes over.
Each day, I risk a little more, trusting the new foundation that I’m laying. New routines. New interests. Driving more. Planning things fun and just for me. I’m trusting that today will be better than yesterday. More than that, I’m trusting and KNOWING that I’m taking good care of myself, making healthy choices and moving toward a life of my own choosing. I smile accepting real limitations of age and station in life, but also knowing that there are many silly, self imposed limitations that need to be shed. As I heal, the words flow out of my fingers in my morning blog, delighting me as I express myself.
This holiday, I’ve already discovered there are many judgments from others that I can simply disregard. If someone doesn’t even know whether I prefer my new plaid blazer or my favorite hoodie these days, they simply don’t have enough valid information to judge my current state of mind. If they’ve not talked to me in months, only to call expecting me to be stuck in July’s sorrow, that is on them, not on me. Embracing this is freeing me to to heal more quickly. The expectations of others on widows is often an unfair projection of their own demons unprocessed. Sorry, I’m dealing with enough right now. Opinions of me by others will not take up space in my healing brain.
In this holiday season, I remember something wise that my wonderful God Mother, TJ, shared with me long ago. Healing is knowing what doors to close and which ones to leave open just a crack. Healing doesn’t happen overnight, but slowly, like the mending of a cut or the opening of a peony. My life is becoming a garden rich with new friends in my new town. People that I can call when sorrow and grief get me down, like my sweetest gal pals, Miss Firecracker or Ninja Neighbor. I also call them when I have the best news to share or just because I feel like hearing their voice.
Find some time to Celebrate the things from which you have healed this year. Celebrate your own new friends and make some new traditions. Although robbing us of many things, Covid has forced a very busy world to slow down and hold close our family and friends. I’m finding Christmas is the best time of all to heal, while honoring those new angels we love and miss so much.