Why are the holidays tough on you?
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Property taxes... 🤷🏽♂️1
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I lost my oldest son this year, July, in a car accident. This holiday season will be difficult as I'm still adjusting to my new normal. I still have to be strong for my other kids and we are all grieving together as a family. 💜30
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Chef_Barbell wrote: »I lost my oldest son this year, July, in a car accident. This holiday season will be difficult as I'm still adjusting to my new normal. I still have to be strong for my other kids and we are all grieving together as a family. 💜
That's terrible... My ❤️, and sympathies to you...2 -
Chef_Barbell wrote: »I lost my oldest son this year, July, in a car accident. This holiday season will be difficult as I'm still adjusting to my new normal. I still have to be strong for my other kids and we are all grieving together as a family. 💜
This is terrible thing to have happened. You seem like a wonderful mother.2 -
My dad died 4 days after Christmas when I was 7 years old after battling brain cancer for over a year. We didn't know if he would last until Christmas, so my mom put up a tree in August so he could enjoy it since Christmas was his thing. That year, some of his co-workers brought my siblings and I a ton of gifts and Christmas dinner, and Santa came. We gathered around my dad's bed to take a pic with Santa. He couldn't really speak well at this point, but mumbled thank you to everyone. I found an old polaroid pic years later of that moment, showing him looking off away from the camera. We didn't realize it at the time, but he had gone blind.
Christmas lost it's magic that year. My mom tried her best to regain it for us kids over they years, but it never really came back. As a mother, I've always faked the joy for my own girls and do everything I can to make their holidays special.
Side note, the only time I really feel the "Christmas spirit" are the years when I'm able to pay it forward and give to a needy family, like Christmas was given to my family that year. I wish I was financially able to afford it more.15 -
I’m not a fan of winter/fall - it’s just too damn gloomy for me - I miss summer - I’m not sure what sparked my distaste for the holidays - but I just don’t care for them these days - it’s just meh to me 🤷♂️5
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I’m not a fan of winter/fall - it’s just too damn gloomy for me - I miss summer - I’m not sure what sparked my distaste for the holidays - but I just don’t care for them these days - it’s just meh to me 🤷♂️
Same. I just want to hibernate. And I get really turned off by the nasty that Christmas seems to bring out in people. They are rude in the stores. They reckless on the road. And if the were already an *kitten** of a person before the holidays, the holidays just seems to amplify the *kitten**lery.
It's a hard pass for me... Counting the days til spring and summer.4 -
For me there are a lot of not so good memories associated to this time, some of them recent. I also feel the seasonal depression thing. Dark when I leave for work, dark when I get home. It may still only be 6PM but it feels like midnight.
I cope by trying to stay busy, which is actually pretty easy with 4 kids. MFP is always here. Christmas morning with the kids is always fun. Once that is over I just put my head down til April/May9 -
My dad died 4 days after Christmas when I was 7 years old after battling brain cancer for over a year. We didn't know if he would last until Christmas, so my mom put up a tree in August so he could enjoy it since Christmas was his thing. That year, some of his co-workers brought my siblings and I a ton of gifts and Christmas dinner, and Santa came. We gathered around my dad's bed to take a pic with Santa. He couldn't really speak well at this point, but mumbled thank you to everyone. I found an old polaroid pic years later of that moment, showing him looking off away from the camera. We didn't realize it at the time, but he had gone blind.
Christmas lost it's magic that year. My mom tried her best to regain it for us kids over they years, but it never really came back. As a mother, I've always faked the joy for my own girls and do everything I can to make their holidays special.
Side note, the only time I really feel the "Christmas spirit" are the years when I'm able to pay it forward and give to a needy family, like Christmas was given to my family that year. I wish I was financially able to afford it more.
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Motorsheen wrote: »
Follow the heard hu? 😂...
Never say never, I mean you can take the boy out of California but you can't take California out of the boy... 🤷🏽♂️0 -
grandmother i was close with growing up passed away on mothers day years ago. then my other grandma passed the day after xmas the same year. so its impossible to think of one without thinking of the other and remembering the happy bright days back then
and my ma's bday was right before thanksgiving and it was always her favorite holiday for the most part. like xmas was great but it was often when everybody ended up fighting with each other too; i figure cause it was generally more time spent under the same roof and gave everybody time to remember the things they were angry about.
where as thanksgiving was just long enough to get together and have some laughs and some good food and then turn around and head back home.
our last thanksgiving before she was gone was a really good one too. her and my dad had already divorced but they were finally starting to be more amicable to each other and it was just a good time together. she was staying at the house with me and my wife at the time the day before thanksgiving, and there was this moment then where i was sitting around playing my xbox and she was just watching it with me and was like "i can't believe how much different this is from when you and your brother used to play mario when you were kids"
the game had a song associated with it too and i ended up finding it on youtube and playing it for her cause i thought it was pretty. she did too. there's a line in it that says "For all of the loved ones gone, Forever's not so long".
that lines always stuck with me, especially around the holidays.
i guess its easy to trick yourself into thinking those loved ones are gone and you're alone. but they're still here, in their own way.
you might find yourself changing as a person, sure, but everything good they ever did echoes across those years into today, into you, and that part is impossible to change. it's like tossing a pebble into a river and thinking "oh that'll stop it from flowing"
so basically i try to think of that as much as i can and then it's like they're all here standing with me and i can hear their voices again8 -
I'm sorry everyone but I freaking love the holidays... I spent too many years as the elephant trying so desperately to hide, not to enjoy it all today... I love crowded malls, Christmas shopping, Santa pictures, Christmas town, holiday movies... Etc...7
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@Chef_Barbell and @Just_mel, and to all the others who are feeling the hard pinch of loss during this time of year
It's incredibly hard dealing with the voids our loved ones leave behind and sometimes our holidays(or the rest of our lives really) just never recapture the joys the way they were before.
I think the very 1st Christmas that seemed very different and sad to me was in 1965; a very sweet soul in our family was lost and even at 13, life shifted as I knew it. Quite of a few other sad losses throughout the years happened and Yes, those things make it rough, definitely. But every single year we've always had our 3 children home with us during the holidays, making it crazy fun busy. But since this crappy year has detoured many people's plans, we won't be spending the holidays with our kids and that'll make the sadness seem greater, I'm sure. My goal is simply to see it to the other side and hope/pray for better times.5 -
I used to love this time of year due to snowboarding. Now though, in light of certain events that are going on, I’m more in a depressed mood with a lot of anxiety. My parents see it, my in laws see it. Though I try to push through because of my 2.5 year old. I could say it could get better but all the way until my sons birthday in April it’s just filled with a bunch of memories that’ll be rough to move past.5
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Do I violate the restraining orders? Do I respect them? Which one to break? One of them? All of Them?
The holidays are filled with dilemmas.
It's difficult.4 -
Sounds like it's time for a big group hug!!
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Deciding this year to avoid large gatherings.
with 5 children and 5 Grandchildren plus Elderly Parents. 😒1 -
Air hugs are the way to go now.1
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Hug Bumps?
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Kashmir_314_ wrote: »
This pic is crushing2 -
Kashmir_314_ wrote: »
This pic is crushing
right?
she could have at least used the bottom arm hole opening
it would have made her reach much more doable
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For me it's just the fact that it highlights my singleness. I have two early teens and I spend a lot of time trying to make it special for them. I make them up stockings, and do one for myself (when they were little they were concerned that santa forgot me the first year - so I have ever since).
They are still a bit self centered, and don't have jobs yet, and as a result mom is an afterthough. So it's often gifts for them under the tree and any for me were ones I purchased for myself. Last year I was in a relationship - engaged in fact to a guy with a number of kids. That is no longer the case, so I also grieve the loss of his kids and family at this time too.
Overall though... I have enough income to put some gifts under the tree for the kids, and maybe even a couple for me - so I will be happy with that. In the grand scheme of things(considering all those who are suffering more this year than ever before)... I am utterly blessed.
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Mr_Healthy_Habits wrote: »I'm sorry everyone but I freaking love the holidays... I spent too many years as the elephant trying so desperately to hide, not to enjoy it all today... I love crowded malls, Christmas shopping, Santa pictures, Christmas town, holiday movies... Etc...
I did the same thing for a long time. It’s funny now with covid I want to break out of that shell and just be around in public. I guess it’s the wrong time to have the IDGAF attitude or try to adopt it. I guess would really do anything for my kid.2 -
On a lighter note— my next-door-neighbor is a stereotypical trashy druggie. We live in a nice neighborhood, with a few exceptions. His house has had no repairs in 25+years. He usually decorates for Xmas, but this year he went all out. He has one kind and color of bulbs all over one tree, live limbs and dead limbs, and half way across the front of the house, another kind the rest of the way down the house and around the plastic lawn chairs and towards the next tree, yet another kind on that tree and laying in a pile below it. I don’t go out after dark. I just can’t—-0
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Oh, where to I start...2
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Motorsheen wrote: »
I hugged you both anyway! HAHAHAHA!
And hugs for all of you who are hurting.
Extra hugs. ❤️2 -
Chef_Barbell wrote: »I lost my oldest son this year, July, in a car accident. This holiday season will be difficult as I'm still adjusting to my new normal. I still have to be strong for my other kids and we are all grieving together as a family. 💜
I am so, so sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine the pain.
Christmas is... difficult. I'd probably prefer to just treat it like any other day of the year, sometimes I feel like all the "joy joy" is being shoved down my throat.
I have no happy childhood memories of Christmas. Just the opposite. My parents were alcoholics and had two weeks off work so the drinking escalated and life at home was more nightmarish than usual. Since we had immigrated from another country, I had no extended family here and was trapped alone in the alcoholic hell. My most vivid memory of Christmas is my drunken mother standing in the doorway of my bedroom hurling my unwrapped gifts at me because she was mad at me for something or other.
A very good friend of mine had been raised in a home that didn't celebrate Christmas (or anything else for that matter) so we were Christmas outcasts together. He used to get a gift of a turkey from work and I started putting on a dinner for him and his brothers and any other Christmas orphans that happened to be around. That was okay, none of us were very festive so it was just a big dinner with friends. It was always really important for me to include him in whatever Christmas plans I had in later years so he had "something".
So I'm a grateful member of Al-Anon and the only part of Christmas I actually look forward to is our annual December party. Which of course won't be taking place this year. My Christmas will consist of making dinner for my father and listening to him complain incessantly about me not serving wine with the meal. Joy joy.7
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