If you struggle to read from a screen, listen to an audio of this blog here

Christmas Past and Present

Suddenly, it’s December and a blaze of Christmas lights reflects in the wet streets of my small town. We don’t put our own tree up as a family until Christmas Eve, but there are interesting smells coming from the kitchen, and Kate Rusby’s Sweet Chiming Christmas Bells ring through the house again. I am snug under my new roof, and my children are texting their plans to come home for Christmas. Life feels good and, for this time of year, remarkably calm.

Although I love Christmas, for years, I experienced this period of Advent as one of increasing pressure, slogging through enormous lists of everything that ‘had to be done’ in order to deliver a perfect Christmas. The lists got longer when my children started school and their teachers added costume making, baking, present making, travel for rehearsals and performances to my workload. By Christmas Eve I was often a nightmare to be around, utterly exhausted and ashamed of my short temper. I resented too, making the long trek across country to ensure that both sets of grandparents got to spend time with their grandchildren.

When we first married, the pressure always began in the autumn with the dreaded negotiations over where we would spend Christmas, and with who. Keeping everyone else happy involved driving a 600 mile round trip, often in scary winter weather. Add to that the challenge of managing a toddler in the cluttered and medicine filled homes of grandparents; no wonder January always found me on my knees. And yet, every year I replayed the same impossible quest to deliver the perfect Christmas for everyone else, whatever the cost to myself.

My Greatest Gift

As in every other area of my life, this mad cycle only stopped when my body said, ‘No more!’ After pushing through years of escalating exhaustion and pain, I found myself in bed, struggling to even have a shower without dizziness and palpitations. I felt like a total failure, and as if I had utterly let my family down. The Chrysalis Effect’s idea that my illness was a gift was infuriating, and yet I can now see that fibromyalgia was the greatest gift I have ever received.

Until I became seriously ill there was always the possibility of pushing through. I simply could not entertain the idea of failing to live up to the impossible ideals that I had learned from before I could talk. I was raised to believe that there is no higher calling than motherhood, and that there was nothing more important in my life than keeping my mother happy. A childhood book given to me at Christmas was full of images of helpful children cleaning the house and praying so that both house and heart would be ‘spotless for the baby Jesus’.

To my siblings I was the golden child, but to my mother I was her prop, her successor, and mirror, groomed to replace her as family matriarch. When I reflected her ideal self she was sweetness and light; if I stepped out of line she became cruel and punishing. My siblings, eager for her favour, fell in line behind her. When my illness meant that I could no longer physically push through, I expected kindness and understanding. What I received was a fury and denial of my illness that finally shattered the mirror and enabled me to see the truth, that I was simply an object to her, that had lost its usefulness.

I thought that this experience had shattered me, but I was wrong. It was a brutal ripping away of the layers of false beliefs that had hidden me from myself all my life. I was left raw and shaking, but it was the beginning of my real healing. My husband, children, and close friends wrapped around me like a salving bandage and held me together. Suddenly I could see clearly who saw and loved the real me, and who had always simply seen me as a useful means of fulfilling their own needs. Along with the rawness came an enormous liberation and a physical lightening. My symptoms began to dissolve until I was finally able to move away from the misery and fear of the village I grew up in and live my own life. I could choose who to help and when.

Christmas Yet to Come

Now, as Christmas comes around, there are still conversations about where we will be and with who, but they are conversations about what we want and need, not what we ought to do. We have mostly given up on Christmas cards to people we never heard from during the year. We talk about who is going to cook or buy what, and Christmas feasts have become a collaboration – Simon’s biscotti, Catherine’s Christmas cake, Conor’s trifle, my turkey. I look forward to sitting with Simon peeling a bowl of hot chestnuts, and listening as my children decorate the house. This year we will spend the whole holiday in our own home, and in the New Year I look forward to sharing that home with my chosen family. Thirteen of us will share the load of cooking and washing up and the house will be a chaos of camp beds, muddy boots, damp coats, wine glasses and board games. I can think of no better way to end the old year and greet the new.

Christmas Tips

If you find this week's email is ringing bells for you, you may find my video Tips for Managing Christmas Overwhelm helpful.

If you haven't already, download my free Emotional Survival Kit to help you find calm during this busy and challenging season.

If you resonate with my description of the family dynamics that drove my illness, please know that this is a common experience, but something that people find hard to talk about. Please do get in touch and book a Discovery Call through my website to talk through how I can help and support you.