Green Avenue: November Grays

I don't like the shorter, colder, gray days of November. I dread the holidays. I can't stand the relentless Christmas ads on TV, the appearance of Christmas decorations in the stores just after Halloween. In my opinion the secular "Christmas" we celebrate in this society has little or nothing to do with the religious reason that is allegedly behind it. It is just a giant orgy of money-making for big business. To me the holidays are to be endured not celebrated.

The Byrds did a song in the 60's: "To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season ... and a time for every purpose under heaven ... " (The words are from Ecclesiastes in the Bible, Old Testament, I believe, but I've never been good at quoting chapter and verse... ) The endless cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth as embodied in these New England seasons is often beautiful but also sometimes terribly sad. We are heading into the "death" time of year when the natural world dies back in preparation for the stillness of winter.

This year the "holidays" are especially sad for me because I am estranged from my sister. She made a choice I found upsetting and I made my emotional reaction clear to her. She will not forgive me for having had negative emotions about it. I will not apologize for having had those emotions. This allows her to blame me for all the problems in our relationship. So we are at an impasse. I just found a really good article about this sort of situation entitled "Estranged for the Holidays." This article also does a good job of explaining why I've usually felt "gray" around the holidays. There was familial abuse in my childhood (from an older relative, now dead) so in some ways this situation with my sister feels like history repeating itself. In the past I've felt strong internal pressure to deny my true feelings, keep up appearances and try to be "happy" during these holiday celebrations. I still feel this internal pressure. I also sometimes feel like I'm a bad person because I'm unable to work out this problem I have with my sister despite the fact that I've done everything I can. I've even offered to meet with her and a therapist to try to work things out but she has refused. This resonates with my long-time feeling of being a bad person because I had negative emotions about my abuser, even though the abuse was obviously not my fault. I somehow internalized that it was my negative emotions that were bad, not the abuse itself.

I think the lesson in this article for me is that I need to feel those negative emotions and honor them so I can let them go and make room for some positive emotions based around healthy relationships I have with friends. If I'm just isolating myself and trying my damnedest not to feel my negative emotions then I'm not going to be able to feel any positive emotions either. I'm just going to be numb (gray). So this year I will seek out a limited number of holiday activities with people who are good for me. I will try to remember to honor my perfectly normal mixed emotions instead of beating myself up for having these feelings. Who knows? I might even have a good time.