MAKE ROOM FOR THE GRAIN OF SADNESS THAT WILL ALWAYS BE THERE

When I finally stopped running from the pain of my separated Christmas, things began to look up. My new partner, my daughter and I sat around and read the owl and mole Christmas story, opened our stockings and miraculously liked our gifts. We ate too many cookies and went for a walk. At some point in the day, we each had a small cry about what and who we missed, and we comforted each other. And in the evening some of the people we loved came over, and we played music, ate Pavlova and pudding and sat in the garden. There were twinkly lights and some singing, and no one pretended our family was perfect. All in all it was a good day.
Spending your newly fractured Christmas trying not to be sad, wishing it would all just go away or struggling to make things feel normal is like holding your breath and hoping to stay alive. It just won’t work. You can’t escape the pain of breaking up or the work of rebuilding your life, you just have to endure it. That’s the truth about loss.
You don’t get over it; you just have to set a place for it at the table. And even when you’ve got enough courage to build something new, you don’t ever get back what you lost. But what you do get is another opportunity to make your own life. Don’t let it pass you by.