That Grieving Girl

Every year I sat on Christmas Eve crying.

Not because I could not do it.
I was already doing it all anyway.
The lights.
The presents.
The organising.

I cried because it was not how it was meant to look.

I had this image in my head of what Christmas was supposed to be.
A partner.
A family dynamic.
Someone else sharing the load or filling the space.

But the truth is, I had been doing Christmas on my own for years.

What changed was not my circumstances.
It was the expectation.

I stopped letting Christmas hold the weight of what I did not have.
I stopped waiting for my baby daddy to fill a void he was never going to fill.
I stopped hoping the season would give me something it could not.

This year I made Christmas my way.
Based on where my life actually is.
Not where I thought it should be.

And for the first time, I did not feel sad being on my own.
Because I was no longer grieving an image.

I created magic around my reality, not my lack.

And that changed everything.

I did not struggle because I was weak.
I struggled because I carried too much for too long.

I lost a child.
I stayed in a relationship that kept breaking me.
I became a single mum.
I still had to get up every day and be everything for my kid.

There was no pause.
No space to fall apart.
No room to fall down and stay there.

So I held it together.
Until my body started saying no.

The anger.
The tears out of nowhere.
The nights where my brain would not switch off.
The moments where I felt like I was about to snap and scared myself.

Nothing was wrong with me.
My nervous system was exhausted.

I am sharing this because I know how many women are walking around thinking they are failing when really they are just surviving something heavy without enough support.

If this is you, you are not broken.
You are human.
And you deserve tools that actually help in the moment, not advice that makes you feel like you are doing it wrong.

That is all.