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Home for the Holidays: Alone But Not Blue - By Brette McWhorter Sember
Home for the Holidays: Alone But Not Blue
By Brette McWhorter Sember
As a single parent, you’re probably facing an upcoming holiday during which
you’ll be alone. Most parents have arrangements in which they share or alternate
holidays with a former spouse. When it’s the other parent’s turn to be with your
child for a holiday, you can wind up feeling depressed, sad and blue. No more!
This year, take the holiday by the horns and banish the bad feelings.
Talk to Your Child
The first thing you must do to keep the holiday blues at bay is to talk to your
child. Make sure your child understands where he or she will be spending the
holiday. It can be helpful to mark the plans on a calendar so that the schedule
is solid in your child’s eyes. Explain to your child that you will miss him or
her while he/she is with the other parent on the holiday, but point out that
you’re happy that he/she will be having fun and want him/her to have a good
time. While it’s important to be honest with your child, it is equally important
that you not burden him or her with the responsibility for your happiness. Don’t
tell your child that you will be miserable, lonely, in tears or completely
depressed while he or she is with the other parent. It’s ok to say you will miss
him or her, but follow this statement with reassurances that you’ll be together
again soon.
Make Plans With Your Child
Plan out with your child when you will celebrate the holiday together. For
example, if your child is spending Thanksgiving Day with the other parent, plan
your own Thanksgiving for the day after or for the next weekend. It’s not
important what you do or when you do it, as long as you plan a way for you and
your child to celebrate the holiday together in some way. This will help your
child feel confident that both parents are truly a part of his or her life and
will give you something to plan for and look forward to.
Some parents find that in the first few years after a divorce, it works best if
they spend important holidays together with their child (for example, having the
non-custodial parent come over to spend Christmas morning with the custodial
parent and child). If you think this option would work for you, try it.
You can also plan to have some kind of contact with your child on the holiday
itself. Plan to call him or her on the phone or even to stop by for a quick hug
and kiss on the other parent’s front porch. Making contact with your child on
the holiday itself will not only help your child cope, but will help ease your
own feelings of loneliness.
Make Plans for Yourself
The key to getting through a major holiday without your child is to plan ahead
for it. Some parents simply put all thoughts of it out of their heads to try to
avoid dealing with the unhappy feelings and then end up on the holiday itself
with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
If your family celebrates together for this holiday, get involved in planning
the event and look forward to spending the day with them. If not, you can decide
to have your own party and invite family members, friends, co-workers, neighbors
– anyone you want.
Think About What You Want
Give some thought to what you really want to get out of this holiday. Are there
things you have always wanted to do, but have never been able to? Maybe you’ve
always wanted to go to a football game on Thanksgiving Day, perhaps you always
dreamed of caroling on Christmas Eve or hoped to host a Kwanzaa feast. Now is
your chance to fulfill your holiday wish list.
Filling Alone Time
Even if you’ll be attending a party or hosting some kind of event, there will be
some time on the holiday when you will be alone and if you have no plans, the
day may loom long and empty before you. Take some time before the day comes
around to plan out some things you can do on your own. Look around your
community for events celebrating the holiday – church services, community
get-togethers, civic events, single parent gatherings and so on. Don’t be afraid
to go alone – there are a lot of other parents who are also alone on holidays.
If your day still looks wide open, make a list of things you can do just by
yourself. These don’t have to be earth-shattering, spectacular plans. Anything
that makes you happy and gives you something to do works. Try some of these
suggestions:
● take a long walk alone
● buy a special meal to have alone at home
● cook a special meal for yourself
● go to a movie
● read a good book
● rent videos
● give yourself a home beauty treatment
● buy yourself something you’ve been wanting – wrap it up for yourself to unwrap
if you want
● get a big project done around the house, such as painting or wallpapering
● organize your photographs or make scrapbooks
● clean out your closets or basement
● get a big project done for work
● give some time to a local charity
● stay in bed all day
● go away for the day or the weekend to someplace you’ve always wanted to visit
● chat online with other parents who are alone
● create something special to surprise your child with – a mural on his or her
wall, a batch of cookies, a fort you built in the backyard and so on
● start a new hobby – start knitting, hit some golf balls, make wreaths, build
model airplanes – anything that is new that interests you
Cope With Your Emotions
Don’t forget to make time to deal with your emotions. Have a good cry, punch
some pillows and shout out loud about how angry you are. But then let it go.
It’s not possible or realistic to move on and completely let all of it go, but
it’s important to try to let most of it go. You have to move forward. A holiday
alone does not have to be the end of the world. Look forward to the next time
you and your child will be together and to the next holiday you will celebrate
together. Be happy that your child has two parents who love him or her and that
he/she is lucky enough to be able to have time with both parents on holidays.
Brette McWhorter Sember is the author of The Visitation Handbook: Your Complete
Guide to Parenting Apart, (published by Sourcebooks) and is a former family law
attorney and mediator. Her web site is http://www.BretteSember.com
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