‘Tis the season to be jolly, but if you are in the throws of a divorce, that may be the last thing you are feeling.
This season of holiday gatherings, family celebrations and annual traditions may have you remembering happier days, tormenting over what should have been, or stewing about the injustices of your soon-to-be ex. Either way, while the pain of divorce is inevitable, suffering through this holiday season is optional. That’s right — you have the option of choosing happiness this Christmas season.
Of course there will be moments of sadness or loneliness and it is important to feel your emotions, just don’t dwell in them. Give yourself some time, an hour or so, and then pick yourself up and keep on going. Here are some helpful tips for keeping your holiday spirits up:
- Create new traditions for you and your children. This may include planning Christmas Eve or day with friends or neighbors or a trip to the city. Instead of focusing on what you used to do, create a positive new experience that everyone will enjoy and remember.
- Be grateful for all the good things in your life. It is easy to focus on everything that is wrong especially in the midst of a divorce battle. Shift your attention to all that is good. The love of your children, friends and family. Those who have come into your life that are filling it with support and encouragement.
- Recreate and celebrate yourself. It is natural to feel lonely after losing your life partner and perhaps even your social circle; you haven’t been single in years and need to learn a new way of socializing. Use this as an opportunity to tap into your interests. Take a yoga class, join a biking club or connect with a singles group, volunteer with a local cause that you care about. You will begin to meet new people while developing your interests and passions.
Instead of dreading the holidays and wishing they would quickly pass, give yourself the gifts of gratitude, self-love and personal reinvention. Shift your focus, with anticipation, upon those doors that are opening before you and all that they might have to offer you.
When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
– Alexander Graham Bell
