Christmas Survivor 

I tried not to judge our Christmas as negative. Just different. I noticed the sensation of downward spiraling on Christmas Eve day, this never ending marathon of aimlessness, kids on there 3rd consecutive day home, and the impending festivity of nothing on the horizon. For the past 10 years, I have cooked and organized, planned menu's, shopped, decorated, stressed, and cooked. And cooked.

I just didnt have the energy this year. Or the audience. It was my first year divorced. With shared custody of my children. Whew. It's still just as frightening to write as it is to think it or live it.

A friend of mine said "Try not to just get through it, try to really enjoy it and be present"

Tall order, I thought.

I suppose the payoff to all the times I have eaten crow this year with the idea of staying peaceful with my ex is that we can and do communicate. We discuss the nuturing of our childrens spiritual development, well, I do and he doesent hang up. He loves them, and I remind myself of that every time I feel anger toward him.  They are his children too, and they need each other.

So the temptation to feel sorry for myself, lonely, alone, by myself, was there. As they all went off to his in laws for a Christmas celebration, with the new girlfriend. I went to the bookstore. (Did I mention I am alone?)

Then it struck me, as I walked through the herds of people, the music and colors, the energy of the holidays, I have something this year that I didnt have in the past, authenticity. None of us leaves marriages because it sounds fun. We leave because it's painful, unhappy, hurtful, empty or we're not being loved in a way that feels real and right. Or were left, but that say's all those things too.

I look up spiritual in the dictionary when I get home and it say's "The things that are non-material"

For me, this year, I was able to bring some sense of myself to the table. I offered my children a mother who felt aware and connected and able to really be present. I took them into my bed with popcorn and read from a beautiful red hardcovered edition of Alice in wonderland. I invited there dad to breakfast on Christmas morning and we opened gifts and walked to a restaraunt together, like pioneers on a new frontier, we floundered a bit, discovered topics of conversation that worked and some that didnt, hopefully realizing that inspite of our changes and differences underneath it all we were a family still and did our best to honor that.

I dressed them in there best, gave my four year old a manicure, and handed them the gift for there fathers girlfriend and walked them to the door, reminding them of the little things that matter to children; that they could eat all the candy they wanted. And that's an easy thing to say when I'm not gonna be around to watch the effects.

This is not the life I planned. And I did plan. But this is the life I have and so I need to believe in it and participate in it. Some of these things, like the holidays, have felt like an initiation or perhaps a hurricane. They can't and shouldnt be avoided, and the only way out is through.

Then the dawn breaks, the day shifts, I stop wrestling with it all. And some beauty comes through, albeit slanted in ways, but it's there.  And theres only room for gratitude.