People assume you’re grieving the breakup.
And yes, of course you are.
But the truth is bigger, harder to explain, and nearly impossible for people who haven’t lived it to understand.
When someone leaves after two decades, they don’t just take themselves.
They take the traditions, the rhythm, the structure, the “us” that once made the season make sense.
You’re left standing in the middle of your home holding ornaments from a life that doesn’t exist anymore.
And no one talks about that part.
What do you do with the decorations?
This is the question that ambushes you — in a basement, in an attic, or a storage unit where the air smells like cardboard and endings.
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You open a box and feel your stomach drop.
Not because it’s filled with Christmas décor, but because it’s filled with your old identity.
Stockings you chose together.
An ornament from your first year of marriage.
A tree skirt you bought during a year when you still believed in forever.
You ask yourself:
Do I throw these out?
Do I keep them?
Do I force myself to use them so it all feels “normal”?
What even is normal now?
No answer feels right.
And that’s the part no one talks about — how the smallest things become emotional landmines.
Family can feel “too familiar” to feel comfortable
Family is supposed to feel comforting.
And mine really is loving and supportive in all the ways that matter.
But healing can make even familiar spaces feel unfamiliar.
Sometimes being with the people who know you best brings up old versions of yourself — versions you can’t quite access anymore. It’s not about them at all. It’s about how much your life has shifted.
They remember the “before” you.
You feel that version when you’re around them.
But that person doesn’t exist anymore. The contrast can sting in ways that are hard to put into words.
None of that is their fault.
They care. They want to help. They show up.
It’s just that their traditions, their rhythms, their normal —
all highlight how much your world has changed.
The grief isn’t about them.
It’s about realizing you don’t feel like the same person anymore, even in the places that once felt most like home.But their traditions remind you of who you were before your world shifted in a single moment. And it feels really, really heavy.
And then there’s the new chapter
A new home.
A new space.
Someone else’s traditions already in motion.
It’s tender, beautiful, and strangely disorienting to build a sense of “yours” in a place that was fully “theirs” long before you arrived. You’re grateful to be welcomed into a warm, loving, established holiday rhythm — yet quietly aware that you’re still figuring out where your own pieces fit, and which ones you even want to keep.
All while carrying the truth that your name has been pulled off Christmas card lists, that you won’t be invited to celebration dinners with old friends, that the Christmas Eve traditions you once had don’t include you anymore, because he won the best friends in the divorce.
There’s no guidebook for how to blend your past, your grief, and someone else’s long-held traditions.
I’m just trying to learn as I go.
So I’m not trying to reinvent anything this year
I’m not forcing myself to be festive.
I’m not trying to create brand-new traditions overnight.
I’m not pretending to be healed or wise or above it all.
I’m doing one small thing at a time.
Whatever doesn’t hurt.
Whatever feels honest.
Maybe I’ll light a Christmas candle.
Maybe I’ll cook something comforting.
Maybe I’ll simply admit,
“This is still hard, and that’s okay.”
And maybe that’s enough for now
Not a lesson.
Not advice.
Just the truth of where I am.
I’m slowly rebuilding a life that feels like mine —
and trusting that, in time, the holidays will begin to feel like mine again too.
