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Coping with holidays

Started by Analiese, December 07, 2021, 06:27:43 PM

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Analiese

Merry Christmas to all you beautiful people..
Holidays always painful for me. Raising children and them showing no interest in their aging parents leaves us at a loss. Cant believe how cold and mean an adult child can be to parents who lived for them only to be thrown away like an old shoe. What goes around comes around...

Stilllearning

Hello, A, and welcome to WWU!  We ask all new members to go to the Home Page and read the posts under Read Me First.  Please pay particular attention to our Forum Agreement to be sure that WWU is a good fit for you.  We are a monitored website.  Also you need to change your screen name to something more anonymous, Luise is the only one who uses her real name.

I was exactly where you are a few years ago.  Every holiday I would tell myself that I was fine but the whole time I was thinking about how I deserved to be treated better than I was being treated.  I barely saw my DS and his wife and my grand kids because I would be cooking all day and they would take a nap after the meal.  I would smile fake smiles and try to act happy so that I would not ruin everyone's holiday.  I worked my buns off trying to make the day happy for every one else.  Then one year my DH suggested that since the weather was going to be incredible for Thanksgiving day but it was going to really stink the day after why didn't we go canoeing on Thanksgiving day and cook the meal the day after?  Such a wonderfully innocent suggestion but it made me really think about holidays.  We put so much pressure on the holidays.  Thanks to the movies and shows we see we think that everything HAS to be perfect for the day.  We think that if we are not surrounded by our loving families that we must have failed in life.  What a load of poppycock!  So now I move the holidays around to suit my schedule.  My DS and his two girls live with me now but the girls are going to be with their other parent (who decided that she was a he) for Christmas.  I am starting to plan what the three of us (DH, DS and me) can do during the time that the girls are gone.  We are really enjoying planning!

So my advice to you is to plan something wonderful for yourself.  Every time your mind wanders back to that horrible thought about how awful you are being treated pull out your plans and think about how much fun you are going to have.  If you have read much here then you have probably seen my mantras but here is one of my favorites....

What you focus on expands

Focus on your own happiness for a change, let's expand that!

Hugs!
Your mind is a garden your thoughts are the seeds
You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.
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