I have a lot of holiday related trauma, and I wanna talk about that here today because I don't think enough people acknowledge how hard holidays can really be for some people.
Honestly, I didn't realize that I even had issues with the holidays until we decided to stop celebrating Christmas. Once I pulled away from that, I realized just how much I disliked the holiday and how much pain and bad memories were wrapped up in the festivities. A lot of emotional abuse always happened around the holidays and this time of year still puts me on high alert because of that.
I don't feel like I talk about it a lot, but I'm a mostly-atheist witch. Since I discovered this about myself, celebrating Christmas has just felt wrong and weird. Raven and I haven't done Christmas since 2015, and every year our Yule celebrations get better and better as we create new traditions and incorporate more of what's most important to us into the holiday. But still, there's those lingering feelings of guilt because my kids don't have what other kids have, or what I experienced growing up. My anxiety likes to take these tiny seeds of doubt and worry and just run wild with them until my entire brain is overgrown with tangled vines of stress and second-guessing. However, if I am truly honest with myself, those memories aren't all that good. Don't get me wrong, my childhood wasn't all bad, and there definitely are a few good memories in the mix, but I also know how my brain works.
A few years ago, I discovered that the few really clear memories I have of my childhood are also days where some of my most violent trauma happened - my brain just cut those parts out and shoved them into some dark corner that I still don't have access to. It's kind of like how a flashbulb memory works, but really fucked up instead of all warm and fuzzy. The only way I found this out about my memories and my brain is because I was told about an incident that happened when I was four. I can remember what I believed to be everything about that day, but I have no memory what-so-ever of the violence that also occurred, and so I've since learned that even my good memories can't be completely trusted.
It's important to remember to take off the rose coloured glasses of nostalgia. The holidays were stressful even when I was a kid, there are home movies of me throwing fits (my family liked to document them to use it as fuel to mock me and make me feel bad later) at Easter and at Christmas, and any time a manipulative and abusive family comes together, trauma happens. The holidays were not as good as I want to remember them, and I don't want my kids to have a childhood that looks anything like mine. I want their childhood to be filled with love, and fun, and for them to be able to enjoy their holidays into adulthood without this shadow looming over them, and I'm doing my best to give them that, on my terms, and in my way. This isn't the first time I've said this, nor will it be the last - parenting with c-ptsd and as a formerly abused child is difficult as fuck. It's something I will probably struggle with through my kids' entire childhood and that's difficult to accept, but every year I seem to grow more confident in taking my life back from my abusers, and let me tell you, that feels good.
Honestly, I don't know what to do with all these feelings. Sorting through them is a long and arduous process, and in the mean time I'm trying to create new traditions and fun memories with my family to turn the holidays into something I can find joy in and get excited about. What are holidays like for you? Do you struggle to get into the holiday spirit? Let me know in the comments below how you cope!
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