I spent a lot of holidays wanting a different past. I didn’t want christmas carols to make me sad. I wanted to go back to where I’m from and have things be different, I wanted to reread the old story and find that things worked out after all with the people I loved first. I was a hopeless romantic, thinking this year, this year.
Then, a friend read a blog post that said the best indicator of how things would go with your family this holiday is how they’d gone before. My hand was on the back of the dining room chair and it was dusk and I could feel my expectations permanently rearranging when she read that line to me. This was fifteen years ago.
Perhaps you already know this, but it’s something I had to learn: I cannot change my past, but I can make a new one. Whatever I do this year and next year will soon become ‘what I’ve done for years.’ Before I know it, peeling oranges while it snows will remind me of this life, the one I grew up and made with the people who love me now, partly out of the pieces I inherited, and partly out something entirely new.
Making new memories is the gritty practice of ‘healing.’ It’s changing our brains one new love, one new skill, one new reaction, one new memory at a time. The self transforms a bit, incrementally, as we move into a life of our own.
A new memory we are cultivating is having a “christmas party” at home most nights in December. For at least an hour before bed it’s: no phones, warm lights, hot chocolate (with melted andes mints, ideally), puzzle out on the table, christmas music on. It helps that it’s a sensory experience, and that we practice it night after night. It’s fun and also a dedicated action.
I’m so curious to know the ways you are making a new past for your future self, or, in other words, what you are up to today. I hope you tell me about it.
Cheers, friends — to moments that will be easy to look back on,
Brit
✨ Art makes the perfect gift ✨
I love how you knit words together. Thank you for a peek into your cozy evenings in this season💗
“I’m so curious to know the ways you are making a new past for your future self, or, in other words, what you are up to today.”
That is such a powerful reframe, Brit. An adjacent sharing that came to mind: I saw someone share that part of healing from our past is also letting go of the person we could’ve been, that perfect self who’s we believed if we were, none of what happened to us would have happened. We need to let go of all of those selves so that we arrive at who we are now, and accept who we are so that we can create a future that we want more intentionally.
Anyhoo! To respond to your curiosity: I’ve been cleaning around my apartment in the day and reading at night. I also let myself take a little nap. I’m also in quite the introspective/retrospective mood myself :)