Moving Past Holidays and into a New Year

This year’s holidays were pretty awful for me. I really didn’t feel thankful for a lot at Thanksgiving, I didn’t find joy in writing Christmas cards or buying gifts, and I had nothing to decorate. I wasn’t exactly fixated on how miserable I was about the holidays, I just wanted to avoid them.

I LOVE decorating for Christmas - mostly outdoor lighting. We had thousands and thousands of lights and I don’t know what we’ll do in the future, I think maybe my outdoor decorating days are over. I invested so much money and time curating the type of lights I wanted and which windows each would look good in, I had a labeling system (naturally) and bins dedicated to different types of lights.

I got hung up on ornaments this year. Our artificial tree is gone, and I didn’t want to get a new one knowing it was one more thing we’d have to move. Maybe it was time for an upgrade anyway. Someone suggested doing a tree drawn on the wall on a big piece of paper, but I just didn’t have the jolliness in me.

Sometime in the early days I grabbed one plastic box of ornaments that I saw in the upstairs. I don’t know if anything in it has been damaged, but I hope not. I’m just too chicken to open it and/or don’t want to cry that these are all the ornaments I have left. Ornaments are things you have for life - I had ornaments from my birth all the way through last year, and they all have some kind of story or meaning. I had ornaments that I made my grandpa that were returned when he died that have his handwriting on them with my name and the year I gave it to him. To lose pieces of memories is so painful.

Of course there will be new memories and new ornaments. We bought one this year on a trip and my 5th grader made me one. The handmade ones are the best!

My friend Jen came over to see the house a couple weeks ago—she hadn’t seen it since the fire. She commented that you can’t really understand what it’s like until you’re in that space … and it looks good now. Just empty. I feel kind of empty too.

I took comfort in the online fire survivor group I’m in. Just being able to read that I’m not alone in feeling sadness and grief over the holidays is helpful. I also find this comfort in my church community, a place where it’s okay to grieve and not love milestones or traditionally celebrated holidays. It may take a lot more time to feel normal about Christmas in particular, but we should be “home” for Christmas next year and I plan to make it a warm, cozy, and peaceful time.

I appreciate my support circle for mostly letting me be in the space I’m in this year. If you’re reading this and you are a fire victim or are otherwise grieving, know that you’re not alone and it’s okay to be where you are. There is no rule that you have to be jingly-jangly-jolly at Christmas, or celebrate THE GREATEST GIFT OF ALL, MOTHERHOOD!!!! on Mother’s Day—some years it just isn’t in ya and that is okay.

I almost always feel hope going into a new year, and that’s true this year. I’m ready to be less exhausted, at least by my living situation. My fingers are crossed that we can catch a crisis-free break this year. I plan to seek out moments of joy (highly recommend Ross Gay’s books, The Book of Delights and The Book of More Delights, both of which are linked to at RossGay.net) and share them. I’m going to keep reading a lot, which is a way for me to recharge and learn about the world or see things through someone else’s lens, and keep doing yoga.

May this coming year bring you peace above all, even if that is in fleeting moments.