December Prompt – The Gift of Memories

Here it is – the first blog post based on a prompt! I will be sending out the month of “January’s Daily Prompts” next week, but I recently shared 15 prompts for December, to get us going and in practice for using the prompts. Can I say prompt one more time? Why yes, I can! The first prompt for December is “The Gift of Memories: What is a holiday tradition or memory that has shaped who you are today?” It’s a bit of a tough one for me, but I’m going to barrel through and write a portion of my story based on this prompt (there it is again).

As I said, holiday traditions and memories are tough for me. I’m not 100% certain, but I think it goes back to my very early years, when my father passed away shortly after Christmas when I was two years old. I was a pretty bright, precocious child even at two years old, so I believe that his passing somehow became connected to the holidays for me. From what I’ve been told, he had been sick and getting worse throughout that Thanksgiving and Christmas season, and he passed away in early January. All that to say, I can’t remember a time when the holidays didn’t bring joy AND sadness. Happiness AND tears. Low grade anxiety and feelings I didn’t always understand.

At 52, I can look back over a lifetime of holiday seasons and see how this all might connect together, but I didn’t really connect it for a long time. To top it all off, these feelings were made harder in my early 20’s when I lost my grandfather in December of 1992, and my brother the next September (1993). Both of their birthdays are in December, and wow… the holiday season in 1993 and then 1993 were simply the worst. The grief added to the above mentioned medley of feelings has meant that I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the holiday season for a very long time.

Having children changed the dynamic a little, and I’ve worked hard to overcome the negative feelings around the holidays for their sake, and for my husband who loves celebrating and is a very happy sentimentalist. I have been more successful at overcoming some years than others, and while I don’t really think time is always the healer some say it is, time passing has definitely helped. One of the things I realized a few years ago was that I needed to re-write my traditions. Feel the feelings and then focus on the beautiful parts of the holiday season. Be grateful, thankful and count my blessings at Thanksgiving. Embrace the miracle and joy that is the Christmas season. All while remembering that life… is bittersweet. And giving myself permission to feel both the joy AND sadness, the happiness AND grief, that’s the best gift I could give myself.

I know we’ll be writing more about the holidays this month, so there will hopefully be more cheery posts coming. Thanks for reading my first blog post based on the prompts, and I hope you will consider joining in! You can sign up to receive the prompts HERE, and follow me on Facebook and Instagram to share your story too!