When you're estranged at the holidays

This is my oldest daughter. I love her very much. We are completely different, yet there was a time we appreciated and honored that in one another. I never stopped appreciating the uniqueness of her, but she became very hostile toward me as a coping mechanism when some fears arose for her. No matter what I did, she was hostile. She couldn’t help blaming me for the bad way she felt about herself because of how she responded to her own fears. Then, after she had moved out, I thought things were okay - I knew energetically it still felt hostile, but on the surface we were supporting her in every way we could and she was at least talking to us, if not deeply about anything of importance. Being with difficult feelings has always been tough for her. Ironically, I’ve been with difficult feelings my whole life and it doesn’t intimidate me. But she got the avoidance gene from my mother and my younger daughter who has a different dad got it from her paternal grandfather. The older one secretly went behind my back, influenced my younger daughter and now they both live with my ex and don’t speak to me at all. Whereas my parents did way worse stuff to me over many years and I gave them tons of chances into my 30s before I walked away for my own health and ability to try to do better for my own kids, my own daughters are angry at me for things like telling too much of the truth, being energetically aware of certain things, an administrative error and something I apparently did with the dog that the younger didn’t like that happened years ago that I can’t even remember. There is one other issue, one that I am truly sorry about but that we had discussed, I had apologized and I truly thought we had moved on from it.

So it is the holidays are are empty of the people who either we have chosen to walk away from or have chosen to walk away from us.

How do we deal with it?

One - we light candles.

One of my favorite traditions when my kids were little, was lighting advent candles and saying our wishes for the world as well as our gratitudes. I will continue this tradition and light a candle for the loved ones from whom I am estranged with a wish and a blessing for their very best, no matter whether it includes me or not, trusting their journey and mine and wishing us all joy and love.

Two - we open to spontaneity, releasing ourselves from the pressure to do anything holiday related that our spirit isn’t really in.

This picture is from the only article for which I’ve ever earned money. I wrote it for Christianity when I was pro-life but still as, ever, an unpopular bridge builder. Phillip Yancey liked my article though and wrote an encouraging comment when evangelicals wrote that they didn’t like it - for reasons that had me confounded me even at the time, from an evangelical perspective: they seemed upset I wasn’t condemning enough. Oh well, I was pretty sure that was a very Jesus-thing to be: not condemning.

Anyway. They came to my house - well actually my apartment and did this photo shoot and told me not to smile, that Christianity Today wanted a “serious piece.”

At the time my husband and I were spiritually married but it would be years before we tied the knot legally. In the background is my oldest daughter. My husband used take her to do laundry together at that apartment and she would put her little stuffed animals in the dryer and say, “Disappeared!”

Three. I give myself time to cry on the holidays. I know stuff will come up, so I plan for it. The more I let my heart break open to love, the more love I can let in, in whatever form.