The Holiday Hum Drum

Ah the holidays, a joyous and occasionally stressful time for most, and for those of us with family trauma…well less than exciting at times. Most holidays for me are spent reflecting about my childhood, the mixed emotions of what a gift really implies, and the reasoning behind family gatherings.

Like many others, it’s hard to sit at the intersection of loving my family, and feeling like holidays gloss over the reality. For me, it sends me into doubt. Doubt around my reality, if what I remember is true, and trying to calm the frayed edges of things I thought were trimmed clean long ago.

My family has always been focused on image and what can be seen from the outside perspective. Almost like a photograph in some ways, the Christmas tree lit up, the stockings hung, and the kitchen bustling with activity. People smiling as they talk about there jobs, laugh joyfully at the children’s glee; the illusion of the perfect family.

We ignore the slight disfunction under the surface. The energy that hits a slight twang. The edge in the air.

It’s just normal enough.

In that moment, the times it’s felt weird to share about yourself settle, the worries ease, and the eggshells become sand under your feet.

Until it’s not.

Until a comment lands just slightly off.

Until a memory stirs that doesn’t match the story being told at the table.

Until your body tightens before your mind can catch up.

And suddenly you’re back in that familiar place. Wondering if you’re imagining the tension. If you’re being too sensitive. If this is just what families are like and you’re the one who never learned how to play along.

That’s the dissonance of it. It’s the way everything looks fine, while something inside you is bracing for impact. It’s how quickly the ground can shift from sand to glass.

Holidays don’t create these feelings. They expose them.

They highlight the gap between how things look and how they truly felt. Between what was celebrated and what was survived. Between the version of the family that exists in photos and the one that lives in your nervous system.

Loving your family doesn’t erase what happened.

Missing them doesn’t rewrite the past.

And feeling unsettled in these moments doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful, broken, or wrong.

There’s just a large group of people that would rather ignore it than feel it.

So if the holidays leave you reflective, raw, or oddly untethered, it’s not weird and it makes complete sense. You’re responding honestly to a history that was never fully acknowledged. You’re sitting with the reality instead of smoothing it over for comfort.

And that, uncomfortable as it is, is its own kind of gift to yourself.

To the you that remembers.

You don’t have to resolve it this season.

You don’t have to explain it to anyone at the table.

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do during the holidays is simply notice what’s real, and let yourself stand in it without pretending it’s anything else.