Crappy Holiday Pain Is Finite

Merry Christmas, CN and a reminder that crappy holiday pain is finite.

If you’re alone, sharing kids for the first time, going through the meat grinder of divorce, or just had your first D-Day with a FW, please know it will not always suck.

It. Won’t. Always. Suck.

Life reconstitutes itself. We reinvent. We have to. Just keep showing up. And eventually you get to the place where all the grief is just a dull throb, a memory, a navigation skill set you acquired, some shabby baggage you still lug around with you, but will fit easily into an overhead compartment. It’s not anchored to you dragging you down any more.

I’ve had crappy holidays. My chump street cred is well-established here, but for any newbies, I had a D-Day right after Thanksgiving. A second one after Christmas (he was working on Christmas Eve and disappeared. Good times.) I received a tye-dyed license plate cover as a gift. Honestly, you cannot make this shit up. And a plastic necklace I returned for $15 and bought a pair of socks.

I also bred with a FW and even though I always had Christmas (I spent a fortune on those custody battles) I had to share some portion of a holiday with the FW. I’ve given advice all over this blog on how to survive this stuff — make new traditions, white knuckle it through, volunteer… my point today is:

It gets better.

Even if your material circumstances are reduced. Few people get through infidelity financially unscathed. The important thing is showing up for the people in your life who matter. That pays dividends in life. If you’re doing everything to give your kids a good Christmas while your heart is breaking, your kids are going to remember that good Christmas. They’re going to know you were there for them. You’re modeling mightiness. Resiliency. Some day they may face a personal tragedy and you’ll be their lodestar. They’ll know survival is possible, because you survived and made it to Tuesday. (The day the pain stops.)

Enough of the heavy stuff, Tracy. It’s Christmas!

Anyway, I’m here on the sidelines cheering you. I read the social media. I see the pictures of your trees and your cute kids. Your new chair. Your experimental tradition in the making.

I’m so proud of you.

You’re navigating this shit show so well. I’m many years out from it, but I haven’t forgotten it. But I wanted to tell you how Mr. CL and I are celebrating. We had my friend Yoma over to visit yesterday and today. I’ve written about her — she’s in my book too, in the acknowledgments. Yoma financed my leaving the FW. Saved my ass at the worse time of my life. Recognized I was in a domestic abuse situation and she never faltered in her support. Oh, and she never liked the FW from the start. (The only one who didn’t.) She never sugar coated it. And she’s modeled what it is to reinvent one life after the next. (She was chumped herself eons ago. Her academic husband ran off with his secretary, in a perfect cliche.)

Yoma will be 90 this year. Here’s Monty greeting her.

Monty has big feelings which he can only express by smothering you.

I don’t have anything profound to add here. I’m just very happy I get to spend Christmas with the people I love. Who are not FWs. I did a lot of lopsided investment in FWs in my life, I know you did too. It’s good to be out of that. But CN, the liberation is so worth it.

I leave you with some other of my other favorite holiday things. Merry Christmas!