We Are Not Okay Out Here
Featuring Pearl Jam, Amos Lee, and The Counting Crows
Note to readers: In lieu of a video this week, I am putting up a throwback lament from my former blog (2019). I never imagined that I would spend Christmas Eve alone, at least not after having kids.
At some point between the birth of my first and the piano recitals of the third, I assumed my efforts held everything together. The home that I busied myself with— all of the decorating and organizing and tradition would never not be central to all of our holidays into infinity.
I thought I was the sun in our little universe, all warmth and light radiating outward from me. A regular Martha Stewart. The budding matriarch. A glowing legacy in my wake.
Oops.
That bustling life went dark several years ago when one week after Christmas, I moved out of our home and away from a marriage of 17 years. The details don’t really matter anymore, but we ended up divorced.
Looking back, I had confused diligence with success— holding my family together had become akin to playing a big game of tag. As long as I kept running, I was winning. Maybe I should have taken a breath. Maybe I should have clung to the safety of the fence.
Yeah, I should have done a lot of things differently.
The problem is that no one can prepare you for the breaking part, especially at the holidays, because it’s a pretty personal thing. My in-laws had always done Christmas Eve, so I wandered a grocery store that first year on my own. That same year, after I hung four of our five matching stockings, I packed the one that said DAD into a small box with his childhood ornaments and handed it all over in a sad exchange in the driveway.
For awhile, the holidays became a lot of aimless drives on back roads with music blasting. I sat in my car in parking lots all over town avoiding the return to a cold, empty house. I stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes when I hadn’t smoked in years. Dinner was a bowl of cereal. I slept in work clothes and I repeatedly hit play on the Counting Crows like a complete sap—
“A long December and there's reason to believe,
Maybe this year will be better than the last.”
In spite of my empty self, I did try to keep some of the traditions alive for the kids. I remember smiling over a fresh batch of cinnamon rolls just moments after I had been doubled over in the bathroom, muffling my pathetic and lonely Christmas morning sobs into a towel.
Divorce is nothing if not a lot of fake smiles.
Even when you think it is for the best, it is never without scars that throb in knowing-moments like Harry Potter’s lightning bolt. I still rub my forehead to dull the occasional sharp and searing reminder— a look back at pictures of that life we broke. Our innocent, young family with so much potential. Those beautiful kids who deserved better than our immaturity and selfishness.
“How could you be so careless?” Amos Lee sang on my backroad drives.
Even now, there is a guarantee of at least one quick, twisted face cry in December. Though we women adjust hardily to new norms, I would be flat-out lying to say that memories of my kids in their footie pajamas, their dad lifting one of them to put the star on the tree doesn’t leave me longing for something. The things we shared will never not be a part of me, and a small piece of me welcomes it.
But— Meta and Google memories can just stop it already.
This season is not all peppermint and hugs and smiling faces. My office has had a steady line of lovely but struggling people out the door for four weeks. Every day, at the top of every hour is another story of holiday loss, exclusion, financial overwhelm, anger, confusion, tears, and exhaustion. We are not okay out here. You have no idea how empty, how sad, how unseen other humans feel.
Or perhaps you do.
I ran into my ex-husband while Christmas shopping this week. We laughed, as we can now. We chatted briefly about our kids and their wish lists. I felt sad that he was trying to figure out what our teenage daughter would want for Christmas on his own. I even thought about helping him but then remembered, in the nick of time, that that was no longer my job.
We wished each other well and after he walked away, I thought about the doughy sugar cookies he loved this time of year. I remembered him dragging the ‘perfect’ Christmas tree through a field, our kids laughing and following in tow.
We did that.
We did some things really well.
So naturally, this week I teared up over sugar cookie cutouts. Not because of a specific memory but because I now know that I missed the point completely— Grandma’s old recipe card in her writing, the mess of nonpareils on wax, the high pitched squeals of my once tiny kids, the dog eating a dozen cookies off the table when we weren't looking. Chaos.
That was Christmas.
I was moving so fast, ticking the traditions boxes. I was more concerned with creating and forcing it all than being with my people while I had them. Now that we are all scattered and living under separate roofs, this whole season is sometimes a bitter pill to swallow. For all of my healing, I admit that Christmas Eve still hurts a little bit.
So, what I mean to say within this lament is that if you are alone this holiday season— you’re not. There are other people out here driving in circles and wandering grocery store aisles to avoid an empty house. Other moms are crying into towels too, and there are lots of old, empty stockings sitting in basement boxes somewhere.
As a professional melancholic, an ex-wife, a grieving mom, and a therapist, I will humbly close this post with my version of holiday self-care—
Deactivate socials.
Eat cookies.
Listen to TEN by Pearl Jam.
Stay in the bathtub until you’re pruned.
Let the call go to voicemail.
Shuffle around in slippers.
Okay— your turn. What are you doing to care for yourself this week? What has worked for you to manage and live through your own grief during December? I know many of you have made it through the unthinkable.
Lastly, if you are spending Christmas Eve alone, feel free to DM me. Puke it all out. You regularly shift through the contents of my stomach here and I owe you (big time). No matter what, I am sending you love and lots of self-forgiveness, especially this week. 🖤
Grief doesn't end. We get better at managing it. We feel like it's getting smaller and less significant. Then it pops up in a surprising way and we are immersed in those feelings again. We'll be writing about these moments for the rest of our lives. Your grief helps me through mine. Thank you.
A little teary-eyed over here, shuffling around in my slippers. That Amos Lee moment keeps replaying in my head. “You guys really love the saddest shit I’ve ever written… yeah, I wrote it, I know what I was doing.” It’s such a perfect acknowledgment of how the hardest, most honest things somehow become the most shared. The way you wrote about loss, memory, and the holidays does exactly that. It hits home because it’s so deeply personal and yet completely universal. This is one of those pieces that reminds me why telling the truth like this really matters.