Happy Holidays my Leftat50’s! I acknowledge your Inconvenient Emotions.
When the holidays come around, no matter where you are in your split, people cease bringing it up. It’s not “Holiday Fodder.” It’s not “Cocktail Party Conversation”. And we all get it. But many of us are quite melancholy around the holidays. The Ex has moved on and is remarried or recovered, and we are not ready to even think about dating again. We are shell shocked and still healing.
We have wounds.
The last thing we want to appear to be at a holiday event is “The Left One.” Still mourning the break-up. The one feeling “inconvenient emotions.”
To all of you, my dear Leftat 50’s, I am here to acknowledge your emotional pain. Because, to quote Oprah, I happen to “know for sure” that it will subside, and then disappear. Just not maybe this holiday season. And that is not only okay, it is normal. Normal. Completely normal! If friends or relatives that you share your feelings with are urging you to move on, which is a nice way of saying “get over it,” I’m telling you that is not your only option.
We are grown women who have lived through a painful re-imagining of the rest of our lives. It does not have to happen on anyone else’s time table. What the first or even the second or third holiday season after a long marriage has to teach us, is that we can find new ways to celebrate.
People don’t understand that those early Christmases as singletons are difficult for us. There’s no fancy jewelry box under the tree this year. In fact, we may forego the tree all together.
Who wants to decorate a tree alone in their apartment with no one to admire it? People don’t get stuff like that. But I do.
Feel your feelings and then, get yourself some new traditions! Certainly, between the tears and sighs of letting go, there is some fun thing you’ve been thinking of doing for yourself. Do. That. Thing. Because doing that thing, no matter how small will start the pattern of new traditions. New You Traditions. Those inconvenient emotions will subside and the smiles of the season will return to you: both inside and out.
We all go through major life transitions when relationships end… Through this website, I will share my thoughts as I walk the path of “New-Self” discovery. It doesn’t matter which side of 50 you are on. The real question is, Are you ready to live life? To forge a Path of Your Own Making (For a change!)? Then stop dwelling over the What-Might-Have-Beens and join me. Share your thoughts here, comment on mine, and let’s do this together!
Yes am interested in your thoughts and look forward.