Christy Writes: When the Holidays Aren’t All That Happy

It’s been awhile since I posted anything new here. Part of that is due to the demands of full-time grad school plus work, in addition to promoting my new book. The other part is the feeling that has been draped over the world these past few weeks like an opaque blanket of despair and fear. I have been largely absent from social media as I won’t engage in fighting about any of it, but apparently not many people feel the same reticence.

And now it’s Thanksgiving.

This is the holiday in which Americans typically gather for a large meal and often pause, either privately or take turns around the table, and say what they’re thankful for. It’s nice, that tradition, and I’ve done it myself at various gatherings.

But let me just throw this out there…

What about the times you’re just not feeling it? Yes, you’re blessed and you know you’re blessed. You have so much more than other people in the world. You get that. But sometimes that’s cold comfort when you really just want to kick stuff.

I was talking with a dear friend about this just the other day. She’s having family issues and various other frustrations that life sometimes hands out like after-dinner mints, and she said she gets so aggravated when people tell her to just count her blessings and remember how much worse things could be. “Of course they could be worse,” she told me. “That doesn’t make the way they are any less hard.”

Yes.

I think sometimes we do more harm than good with that could-be-worse thing. I’m aware that I am a 46-year-old middle class woman in America who is typing this on my laptop in my warm home with a stocked refrigerator and a closet full of clothing. I am keenly and wrenchingly aware that somewhere right now in this country there are women my age who are huddled under blankets in doorways. I know there are women my age in other countries who are praying that their families aren’t killed during the night or that their children will not starve to death. I try to never, ever take my blessings for granted.

But guess what?

Knowing how much worse other people have it doesn’t mean your problems automatically go away. And in fact, shaming someone for how blessed they are just adds a layer of guilt on top of whatever else they’re feeling. In my personal world, I know people who are struggling single parents, who have lost loved ones, who have been laid off, who have health concerns and broken hearts and problem children and car repair bills and vet bills and leaky roofs and stressful jobs and slow-running drains and bad haircuts. I, for one, am not going to tell them they should just be thankful they don’t live in Darfur. They already know that. But knowing it doesn’t make their own burdens easier to bear.

Sometimes it’s okay to acknowledge that you aren’t happy, that things aren’t going well, that there are moments and days and weeks and months that just plain suck. Could it be worse? Yes. Will it get better? Yes. But if right now you’re facing Thanksgiving and then Christmas and New Year’s and all you really want is to just flip the bird to the next two months, you go right ahead.

I’m thankful for all of you. Now let’s eat.

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