Category: motherhood

WHEN CHRISTMAS CHANGED

WHEN CHRISTMAS CHANGED

I don’t know when Christmas turned from magic and lights to misery and blight. I only know that one day the lights didn’t sparkle as much anymore. Shopping feels like a waste of time and a drain on life savings. I don’t see why we spend four weeks preparing for something that lasts a day and two more weeks taking it apart.

For me, Christmas starts at Thanksgiving, when our family combines the holidays. The tree goes up a week or so beforehand and stays for the long haul, like an unwanted guest. Or a fly trapped in a car. Some years, I play Christmas music. Most years, I keep playing my usual, Ozzy and the like. This year has been an Ozzy year (RIP).

I don’t know exactly when I started to hate Christmas. Maybe it was when my former husband threw a fit because I wasn’t decorating the tree the way he thought I should, or in the colors he preferred. I remember standing in the living room, feeling crushed. It was Thanksgiving night or the evening after. I had cooked all day, and the meal was devoured in about fifteen minutes. Then came the cleanup, too much for three young children to help with, while he lay on the couch and napped.

After a few years of begging to do it myself, I learned it was easier to stand by and hand him the ornaments. There was rarely a time when I was alone. He took up most of that space unless I woke earlier than him, something I trained myself to do after a few years of marriage.

.I was excited to put up the tree so the kids could feel the same anticipation we had as we grew up. We finished hanging the cursed lights you pray will still work from the year before. The last thing was the topper. No matter how hard you try, tree toppers never want to stay straight. It didn’t help that he was obsessive about details. Somehow, it became my fault that the angel leaned and refused to stay lit.

Then there was the money. I had no idea how we were going to buy presents with what little we had. He was in Bible college and believed he should not work. If God wanted him there, God would provide.

It was then that I started questioning the sacrifices we were making. We gave money we didn’t have to a church and to missionaries who earned more than we did. We decided things like toilet paper and electricity were luxuries, not needs.

How do you reconnect to Christmas after that?

When I was a child, my parents had a tradition that I could open one present on Christmas Eve. Sometimes I choose it. Sometimes they did. Now that my youngest is still at home, I understand why they sometimes chose it, because there was that one gift they dreaded wrapping.

The oversized gift hidden in my closet this year will be opened the same way, because it is simply too big to wrap.

I remember the year I received a Nintendo with a Smurf game. I stayed up all night playing. When my parents woke up, I was still sitting on the floor in front of our wood-encased television, controller in hand.

My mother asked if I had slept at all and warned that I would be too tired to open presents later. I told her I would be fine. I was twelve. Of course I was.

Every Christmas Eve, we went to my grandmother’s house for dinner and gifts. No one ever knew what to buy for my uncle, a grown man still living at home who owned every comic book printed. He usually received socks or an ugly sweater. I hated getting gifts from him because they were never helpful.

Then, one year, he bought me the entire Wizard of Oz book set. He was a reader. Once he learned I loved books, buying gifts for me became easy. That year, he earned my respect.

My grandmother made many of my gifts by hand. Stuffed animals. Dolls. Raggedy Ann and Andy. A panda bear. Characters from The Wizard of Oz, except the witch. Around that time, rumors circulated about possessed dolls. I wasn’t afraid of Raggedy Ann or Andy, but the Oz dolls terrified me. I stored them in my mother’s closet.

I was fifty-six years old when I learned the infamous Annabelle doll was a Raggedy Ann, identical to the one my grandmother had sewn for me.

Every year, she stitched us matching Christmas dresses or skirts. Mine always brushed the floor. By the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I decided that kind of outfit no longer served my image.

One year, she made me a stocking more than five feet tall. My mother filled it. Stockings were always my favorite part of Christmas. Candy and small surprises, one after another.

We used to cover the tree in silver tinsel so it looked like snow. It didn’t look like snow, but it looked like Christmas. The cats loved it too and walked around for days with tinsel trailing behind them. No one wanted to deal with that, so we didn’t.

As a child, I loved Christmas. The lights. The colors. The music. My earliest memory is of a tree in the front room and presents underneath it. Our dog unwrapped a gift I had made for my parents, and I was furious.

That same year, I wanted a necklace so severely that I couldn’t stand not knowing. I unwrapped a present early, saw it was the necklace, and wrapped it back up. When they asked, I blamed the dog. But they didn’t believe me.

Christmas stopped being simple over time; loss layered itself onto the season. One of my children is gone. A serious family rupture surfaced during the holidays. My former husband despised Christmas and made it miserable. Putting up the tree was always a fight. There was never enough money.

One year we threw the tree away, calling it an idol. I had the scripture to support it. He declared the sin we were committing and the consequences. I enforced them. Out went the tree. Out went the decorations.

Minimalism became our way of life before it had a name.

This is why my adult self does not love Christmas.

My inner teenager can take it or leave it. She once begged relatives to give her gift certificates so she could choose her own clothes. Instead, they bought things she wore once and never again. She loved shopping with her mother because she got to choose, except for the extra-tight parachute pants.

I don’t know exactly where I stopped enjoying Christmas, maybe when I got married, maybe when it became my responsibility to make it happen with people who made it difficult.

My current husband shares a similar background and the same ambivalence about the holiday. We try. We are doing fine. But Christmas is no longer all about lights. Not like when our mothers made it special.

Recently, I did something I hadn’t done in several years. I play instrumental Christmas music and turned it up. Then I baked.

Banana bread. Apple bread. Pumpkin. Gingerbread. Peanut butter cookies. Most of it adjusted to be Paleo.

All day I measured, mixed, and baked. Timers went off. Batter waited for its turn. I tasted everything.

My favorite was the banana bread sweetened only with bananas. Not overly sweet. Just enough.

The final loaf was made from leftovers. Extra pumpkin. Extra applesauce. I still don’t understand why recipes don’t simply use the whole can.

Halfway through, I remembered dinner. I pulled out the Instant Pot, added frozen meat and seasoning, and thirty minutes later, we ate.

The kitchen felt chaotic and magical at the same time, warm, messy, and smelling like Christmas.

I don’t enjoy Christmas as much as I’d like, but I am learning to find ways to make it more enjoyable.

A Reflection on Grief

A Reflection on Grief

The Mourning Dove

I remember the first time I noticed a mourning dove was at our backyard feeders. Its coo stood apart from the others. A sound that seemed to linger instead of passing through. I remember thinking how different it was, like a new voice I had not heard before.

I had read that mourning doves sometimes appear after a loved one has died, offering comfort. I wondered briefly whether that was true and whether it was meant for me or someone else. Then I did what I had learned to do over the years, I dismissed the thought. Too many beliefs I once held had not unfolded the way I thought they would, so it felt safer not to attach any meaning to this.

Later that afternoon, my husband called to tell me they found his brother. He had died in his car during the night. It was the end of his quiet battle with addiction.

That mourning dove stayed, reminding us of how fragile life is. And that people are delicate too. Potential and talent do not protect or shield us. My brother-in-law was profoundly gifted, a creator, a man with vision and skill in the horticulture world. But addiction did not care about any of that; it never does.

Now, three years later, a small flock visits our feeders regularly. Like grief, showing up a little here and there and sometimes all at once.

The mourning doves have become a regular presence in our lives, just like grief.

My husband lost his mom when he was 14. We lost my son in 2020, and now his brother. Sadness has a way of settling in quietly, rearranging our lives without permission. But the coo of the Mourning Dove reminds us to pause and notice that calm can exist alongside pain.

The word Mourning carries a lot of weight, yet the Dove itself is gentle. It does not exaggerate loss; it endures it. Instead of feeling like a symbol of sadness, it becomes a symbol of peace and survival. Encouraging us to persist after something irreversible happens, reminding us that love does not disappear when someone is gone.

Now, when I hear their coo at the feeders, I do not dismiss it. I stop, listen, and remember. I take that moment to whisper a prayer for my mother-in-law and husband because I understand that grief can show up at unexpected times, and that peace can make remembering them easier.

Tortured memories

Addicted to forget them

Yet scarred thoughts remain

Enslaved for the fix

Blacked out,

resting thoughts at peace

A soul gone too soon

Addiction and suicides

Fatal kiss

Life After Suicide Loss Is Lived in the Present Moment

Life After Suicide Loss Is Lived in the Present Moment

Lessons From the Tufted Titmouse

This morning, I was noticing the Tufted Titmouse at my feeders. It is a small, alert bird with a soft voice and a steady presence. A symbol of healing, but not in the way people often think. It is not promising closure or answers. It tells us to keep going even when life has permanently changed.

After losing a child, life stops making sense, and grief collapses time. The future feels unreachable, and the past feels too heavy to carry. Most days are not about hope or meaning; they are about surviving the stage you are in. The Tufted Titmouse reminds us to stay present, do what the moment requires, nothing more. It isn’t suggesting that we “move on.” It invites us to survive this moment, then the next.

The bird’s small, persistent movements mirror how we, as bereaved parents, can continue living through each season. Maybe you are just surviving, fragment by fragment. But getting up and feeding yourself is showing up. Saying their name and breathing through waves that come without warning does not weaken us; it is an endurance that strengthens us.

The titmouse is also known for its song, reminding us how important it is to speak our child’s name, tell their story, and to allow our grief to have a voice. Silence can isolate us. Sharing does not mean we are stuck; it means our love did not end. It does not mean “everything happened for a reason.”  But it does imply that life still has purpose, even while we carry this permanent loss.

Some days, noticing something simple in nature may feel like the only thing that can ground us. It’s a Tufted Titmouse at the feeder, a windchimes melody, a foggy morning of calm. These moments do not minimize our loss; they remind us that we are still here, even when our hearts are broken. The Titmouse teaches us to live with grief rather than resolve it. Strength is not the absence of sorrow; it is learning how to carry it.

Parenting Both Sides of Sibling Sexual Abuse

Parenting Both Sides of Sibling Sexual Abuse

A Message From The Hummingbird

I am the mom on both sides of a complicated story. Loving one child who was sexually abused and loving the one who caused the harm.

There is no road map for navigating something like this. No clean language. No version of the path forward that does not cost something deep and painful. Some days it feels like my entire role is simply to remain standing when I feel like falling and to stay present when everything in me wants to hide. Functioning while absorbing this kind of shock is a challenge in itself.

And yet, here I am. Learning how to love without chasing, how to hold boundaries without disappearing. How to remain myself even when relationships have changed form in ways I would have never imagined.

Lately, I have been thinking about the hummingbird.

A hummingbird migrates thousands of miles relative to its size. It burns enormous energy simply to stay alive. Even hovering in place takes constant effort. It does not rest the way other birds do. It must keep moving its wings just to remain where it is.

That feels familiar.

As parents and humans navigating trauma, we expend energy just to stay standing and emotionally present. We hover. We show up. We pay attention even when everything in us wants to give up. We absorb pain and strain quietly and keep going. Like the hummingbird, we need nourishment, spiritual and emotional, because the work of staying present is exhausting.

The hummingbird symbolizes resilience after hardship. It represents the return of joy and lightness, not because things become easy, but because survival itself requires strength. It reminds us that connection does not require possession, love does not require obligation, and presence does not require control.

We can love deeply and still protect ourselves. We can hold grief and hope at the same time. We can remain connected without losing who we are, and we can stay in place without collapsing.

If you are hovering right now, barely holding yourself together, that is worth remembering! Your quiet strength counts! The energy you put into staying present matters!

Even in the most challenging seasons, strength can exist. You are not failing, you are surviving. And sometimes that is the bravest thing any of us can do.