I have been thinking about the loneliness holidays bring for some people. I hear it all the time, holidays are the loneliest times of the year. There is no other time of year that evokes such feelings of loneliness than holidays and special occasions.
There is so much hype around this “most wonderful time of the year’ the stores, the commercials and those holiday Hallmark movies. It’s enough to make even the emotionally healthy individual to question there lives and relationships.
We seem to have this Norman Rockwell complex around the holidays. It’s like if we don’t look like the great American family in his paintings, then there must be something wrong with us, something wrong with me. Or even worse, we DO look like the picture perfect primates, the essence of the well put-together family, but still knowing the emptiness that chills us to the marrow due to the deep secrets that must be kept at all costs.
Shame hates exposure.
What gift can you give yourself this year that will help you feel less lonely, less empty? It’s time to take care of the inner little person that has never been nurtured. It’s time to take care of you. Not in a selfish it’s-all-about-me way, but in a way that brings safe, calm and loving feelings to your life and to your home.
Thanksgiving was a little different for me this year. I chose to spend it doing things out of the norm. I visited the grave sites of two very special people in my life. I cleaned an office so I wouldn’t have so much work over the weekend. I read a book by a fire. I took a walk, and I even cleaned out the fridge and the pantry. Sure, there were a couple of times that I felt alone, but not for long, and I learned it doesn’t last, those feelings of loneliness, if you learn to be alone and like who you are.
There is no greater gift to give yourself and those you love than the gift of taking care of yourself and start living your one and only life. There is no better time to take care of yourself than over the lonely holidays.
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