Reluctant Motherhood and the Holidays

Without a doubt, my life would have been just as fulfilling had I never become my nephew's mom. Fulfilled with my intentionally childless connections to nature, community, and purpose. I also know that now, I will always have the worry and fear of being a parent. The fear that I will not be able to prevent them from making bad choices or preventing some catastrophic illness, accident, or loss from happening to them.

As fall wanes into winter, I am once again confronted with an annual hyperstate of my ongoing challenges with motherhood and the holidays in general.

Because of my mother's affliction with acute multiple sclerosis, I grew up thinking that Thanksgiving and Xmas were holidays really meant to be celebrated by other families. Families whose lives had not been destroyed by a catastrophic illness.

As a teenager, I most enjoyed our holidays spent on camping canoe trips my dad planned to take advantage of his limited vacation time. My memories of Christmas trips on the Chattooga, Rio Grande, and Niangua River did not include many presents, but plenty of unforgettable moments. I appreciated that my dad bent the shape of what the holidays were supposed to be and feel like, to more comfortable contours. As a childless adult, my favorite holidays were spent with friends, skiing to remote mountain cabins or surfing trips to warmer climates.

I am not sure why I never wanted to have children. But it is a certainty I have carried with me for as long as I can remember. I never wanted to play with dolls as a young child, never wanted to have anyone's babies, and never felt that having children would significantly benefit my life.

I don't know if I would have felt differently if my mother had not gotten sick. The fallout from this disease certainly gave me a strong sense of the fragility of our bodies, the tenuousness of family structure and stability, and how easily and painfully it can all fall apart.

When I became my nephew's parent, at age 56, all my childhood angst about the holidays returned. I felt an overwhelming frustration that I could not provide my son Hallmark movie holiday events; vibrant, festive occasions with lots of family and friends.

Planning my son's Xmas break every year is unpredictable and stressful; frankly, I always feel a huge relief when it is all past.

The holidays are simply one amplified time in a constant dance with anxiety, joy, frustrated narcissism, insecurity, pride, impatience, love, fear, and sometimes outright rage as a parent.

I know there are many people who, for various reasons, find the holidays challenging. Particularly for a few very dear friends who are currently caring for a loved one with a serious illness or have experienced a relatively recent loss within their immediate family.

I am finding that acknowledging the circumstances that create your reality makes it easier to accept that we don't have to win at the holidays. Less and alternative is okay. We can change the shape of this time to a contour that fits where we are.

Few of us will escape difficult life events. The best we can hope for is finding and embracing a path that provides strength and grace in facing those challenges. We are all part of the same community in that way.

This year, we are doing something a little different for my son's Christmas break. Parts of it may be great, parts of it may suck. But I have a plan to make some memories, and we will share whatever happens together. We will take the opportunity to be grateful for our health, each other, our friends, our pets, and our beautiful planet in this one short, precious, and incredibly fragile life we are all given.

If you also have a troubled relationship with this time of year, remember, once it is over, at least we have a whole year before we must face it again.

I wish you and yours a strong and graceful holidays.