In the past, I loved decorating the house with lights galore and garlands suspended over doors, wrapped around banisters and twirled around lamp posts. I’d spend days in search of the perfect gifts. Wrapping glittery packages was an art form. Cookie tins were packed with a colorful array of homemade cookies, and our holiday cards sent with glee, proudly detailing our family’s adventures.
Not this year. Our family has been grappling with the ever-shifting journey of my husband’s deteriorating health from a neurodegenerative disorder, who is now permanently institutionalized. After creating 30 years of holiday memories, this year is decidedly different. There is no guilt, just grief.
While decorating the Christmas tree more melancholy rather than magic filled my heart. I decorated it alone and wondered about the millions of others whose lives have dramatically shifted this year. I dug down into the ornament box and pulled out the green sequined ornament emblazoned with “HOPE.” I bought that the first Christmas after Rick got sick as a reminder that hope always exists no matter what we’re experiencing, and to grab on to it with all the gusto you can muster. Hope reminds us of life’s infinite possibilities and the miracles that do manifest. Hope gets us through times that shake up our world, realizing that the situation will change, too, in whatever is meant to be.
I’ve kept the memories from all those years, but let the fantasy go of keeping up all the holiday trimmings and traditions. Today, my daughter comes home from Virginia Tech for winter break. There aren’t any cookies baked, I have one pathetic snowflake strand of lights outside, no garlands over doorways this year, so unlike the magical Christmases I created in the past, but the house will be filled with laughter, love and making new memories with traditions more simplified. I’m not even sure what we’re having for dinner tonight and that’s a major shift, since she loves Mom’s cooking. We’re indeed living in the moment!
The happy ending envisioned in our book turned out much differently than expected, and as the last paragraph in my story ‘Dancing through the Darkness’ states:
”Ultimately, I learned to dance through the darkness, knowing at some unknown point in time, that dance would be over. In its place would be another one, with another rhythm, a different beat, and new steps to learn.”
This season, the steps I’m intent in modeling for my daughters is resilience, creating joy and expressing love no matter your circumstance. We’re hosting a holiday party to be surrounded by loving hearts in our very supportive circle. These are the gifts of spirit that will serve us all whatever happens along the way. I’m learning new steps and the beat goes on. I’m winding my way through a new landscape of living, maneuvering through the changes with as much guts, grace and gusto as I can muster. I’m letting things be. That’s perfection—making it good enough without the guilt.
This journey has changed me profoundly. I've become a much greater risk-taker and realize the importance of creating joy, of laughing more, of not taking myself seriously, doing things out of self-imposed expectations, and even more so, to extend as much appreciation and love to others in whatever slices of time are carved out. Letting people know when they've touched my heart is a bold way of living and to me, the only way.
So many are dealing with so much. At a holiday dance party on Sunday evening , I reconnected with a woman who’s been dealing with her parents’ eldercare issues for 5 years. My heart goes to her and all she has to do to keep her spirits up. But there she was--dressed in a Santa hat with another for her mom as she rolled her mom in a seated walker to enjoy the music around the piano. The daughter won an award for “most improved dancer”, perhaps driven with a desire to feel free from all the responsibility.
If you’re already in transition, or perhaps the winds of change are lifting you into a new phase, the holidays can hit especially hard when life is transmuting into something different. You’ve got to dig down deep into your heart and know what’s yours to do, as well as what’s not. That takes guts. The holidays are a time to sort out what you really need to do from what would be nice to do if you had the time, energy and other resources to do it.
It takes guts to say “no” to the old and “yes” to a new way of simplifying and rearranging holiday hustle-bustle. Doing so can save your sanity as well as your energy to focus on more pressing priorities that rear their heads at life’s cross sections.
Sandra Strauss
Labels: giving up guilt, Holiday stress, letting go of expectations, simplifying the holidays, transitions
posted by Sandy at 1:20 PM