You Don't Have To, But You Can
Holiday advice from a single co-parenting mom
YOU DON’T HAVE TO
Visit family over the holidays. Especially if you come from abusive or toxic homes and you know going “home for the holidays” is going to cause you incredible stress, pain, and/or more suffering. Truly, no one has to go home for xmas. There are plenty of other times to see family and sometimes everybody needs a rest or a reset.
If you do decide to visit family, you don’t have to sleep in your childhood bedroom or stay in your parent’s house. You can get an Air B and B nearby or stay in a cheap or nice hotel. If those are not options, consider how you might be most comfortable? Can you stay for fewer nights or just the day? Can you ask for a different bed, mattress, or pillow situation? There is nothing like sleeping fitfully at age 45 on the same twin mattress you had when you were a teen.
If you’re staying with relatives, you don’t have to eat the same foods you did when you were a kid, stay in the house for inordinate amounts of time, or not go to the places you want to go because you’re “hardly ever home.”
If you are a new couple, you do not have to do what your partner has previously done over the holidays. You can have a conversation about what you both would like and then make some decisions and likely some compromises from there.
Keep doing something because it’s a “tradition.” Just because you used to love sledding on xmas eve when you were a kid or hunting for Santa in the middle of the night with a flashlight, doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it. Traditions can change and evolve just as people’s needs and desires do.
Bake. I used to bake so many kinds of xmas cookies and for a long time I really loved doing that. This year, my kid and I made one yummy batch of Snickerdoodles and called it a night. In some ways, I think they were more special because we just had the one kind of cookie and I didn’t push myself and then get crabby. Also too many cookies hurts my stomach.
Spend more money than you have on presents. My ex and I did a pretty good job this year of not spending too much out of guilt that our kid is a child of divorce (my thing for sure).
Max out your credit card. I always do this. I would prefer not to. This year my credit cards were already maxed it, so I guess I slayed.
Listen to your Trump relatives. I used to listen to my Uncle Merle go on and on until one day, I said, “Enough. I don’t want to hear it anymore.” Shockingly he stopped and took me for ice cream.
Sit for “visits.” This is maybe a small town thing, but if people decide to drop in unannounced to talk about who has died in the last year, you can say hi and retreat. Or say hi and then hit the Starbucks or a local bowling alley.
Keep up with the spending habits of your kids’ friends’ parents. Sometimes a few really thoughtful gifts beat the huge pile. Sometimes they don’t, but as Mick Jagger wisely opined, “You can’t always get what you want.”
YOU CAN
Make new traditions with bio family, chosen family, or just yourself. When I was first separated and didn’t have my kid on xmas, I started going to the movies by myself and meeting up with a friend after. This year, I hung out with my kid and her dad on xmas eve and then they next day she and I went to my chosen family’s apartment for Popeye’s and horror movies. I think we were all really happy with this, and Popeye’s is open on xmas and so yummy.
Say no. The idea of it is often scarier than the reality of doing it. Just say no to something you genuinely don’t want to do. “Sorry I can’t,” and then no explanation is also great.
Leave early. Cancel a plan. Change your mind. I learned this from my fellow disability folks. It’s truly okay to leave early, cancel a plan, or change your mind at any given time. I have found that the people in my life who don’t get this are maybe not supposed to be in my life. Or we need to have a talk about how feeling like I can’t cancel or change my mind affects me and how they feel when I do those things. I’ve also found of late, that letting folks know how I’m doing and what I might need to make the outing or event easier, often allows me to attend.
For my friends that really like to make a plan, I will often say, “Hey I’m pretty sure this is going to happen, but if you need a 100% certainly of this, I’m totally okay if you make a plan with someone else.” Or “Can I tell you at this [insert particular time in which I feel I’ll know how my body is doing] time?
Do nothing at all on a holiday.
Find people to be with if you are lonely. Tricky, but sometimes at my loneliest, I have gone to a yoga class or an Al-Anon meeting or reached out to a friend so that I could have some human contact. I have also binged shows, napped, and read a whole novel to ward off loneliness. Sometimes works, sometimes not.
Be sad. Be mad. Feel your feelings. Holidays are triggering and hard even for the most well-adjusted of us.
Eat whatever you want and however much you want. Girl dinner for the solstice? Sounds great.
Have a great time with just your kid. I used to feel like I needed to provide these massive family experiences for my child when she was younger, and some of those were cool, but we also have had some great times just the two of us, even on holidays.
Get a gaudy, gay tree.
Leave your tree up for a long time.
Read a book by yourself, say you need alone time, go for a walk, or go to the gym. When I used to visit my bio family more often, going to the gym really helped me not yell at anyone.
Decide to end a marriage or a relationship over the holidays. Maybe not out of the blue, but sometimes, holidays make it all very clear. Wait a beat and then get serious about your misery. Is this worth working on? What do you really want? Have you worked with a therapist? Are there things about yourself you need to work on before making this decision or have you mostly done that?
‘Be an adult.” One of my therapists used to say this to me before I went home to visit bio family, and gosh was it hard, but incredibly useful. Instead of letting my mom decide everything and regressing into my 16-year-old self, I had to make decisions for myself. She hated this, but it was important nonetheless.
What would you add to my permission giving list for the holidays?
Enjoy the typos!
xoxo
Carley
BEST holiday advice ever! Your list is a gift to share!! I’ve come to many similar conclusions, painfully and slowly. I wish I’d read something like this years ago. The only thing I can think of adding is for parents who may have grown children. I’m trying to share these permissions with my daughter as she builds a life with her girlfriend. Subtle judgments or assumptions can unknowingly happen, so I try to be mindful and open to correcting myself. There’s so much stress and crap to deal with in life. I don’t want to add that to anyone’s plate, especially around the holidays when everything can feel like too much.
And yes to leaving the tree up! I’ve been leaving it up until Valentine’s Day. I like it more after the holidays than before.
That divorced parent guilt and comparisons to others (your ex, kid’s friend’s parents, your cousins and their families, etc) can be crippling.
I’ve been on the family holiday divestment track since my kid was born. It became very easy once it clicked that the not safe people in my family who i’d learned to disassociate around or artfully dodge, still were not safe. I could not and would not let them around my sweet baby. I was able to set a boundary on her behalf that I could not set for myself. Since then, it’s been real easy to decline invitations to be in a room with actively unwell, dysregulated, racist, drunk, perverts.
Glad you and your kid were able to enjoy some rad new ways to celebrate. Popeyes and scary movies with treasured buds! That sounds perfect.