With separation and divorce, the holiday season can be one of the most challenging times, where extra tension builds up between you and your ex-partner. In order to get the most out of holidays and continue on your personal growth journey, it is important not to engage in the fighting and instead seek out moments of peace.
Peace is defined as calm, quietness, hush, repose, silence, and tranquility. Peace is the absence of anxiety, composure, contentment, and repose, freedom from war, or armistice. It is harmony between people defined as friendly, conciliatory, gentle, mild, unwarlike, and non-violent. A peacemaker is a person who brings peace, especially between others; is a mediator, arbitrator, conciliator, and pacifier.
Why are the holidays challenging?
There are numerous reasons why the holiday season puts additional strain on our relationships. Events external to your relationship may ramp up during the holiday season. Work, family, and friends are all more demanding during this time, placing additional stress on everyone. This time is filled with obligations such as purchasing Christmas gifts, preparing dinners and events, spending time with estranged family members. Even the apparently innocuous scheduling can be challenging during Christmas. Determining who has the children for Christmas day can be a battleground between you and your ex-spouse.
The holidays have a strong expectation to be a time for family, joy, and happiness. There is extra pressure to fulfill these expectations during the “most wonderful part of the year”. The fact that your family is no longer a single unit is in stark contrast to the idealistic Christmas image. If you are a parent, this reminder makes your reignites your concerns about the effect of the separation on the children. All of these things set the stage for an adversarial Christmas between you and your ex.
If this is your first Christmas since the break up then it does not take much to trigger the memories of Christmas past and stir up intense emotions. Anger and sadness can be overwhelming. They can be so intense that you feel like you will explode, say all kinds of things you will regret later, fall apart, cry in public, look like you’ve totally lost it.
With everything going on no wonder the Chirstmas season is filled with arguments and fights. Despite the challenges of this time, it is an opportunity to grow after your divorce. For those involved in all-out war in their relationship, this season can be a call to lay down arms, wave the white flag of truce, and have some moments of peace and serenity: at least until the New Year.
How to have a peaceful Christmas season
The first step for a peaceful Christmas is to try to deescalate when possible. Here additional planning will be useful. Reset your expectations and understand that a perfect Christmas is not possible.
Perhaps, however, you have been the perennial peacemaker/enabler and what you need right now is a healthy dose of anger to face what needs to be faced, to set up the healthy boundaries that you never had the courage to set before, and to help you see what the real truth was in your past relationship. You don’t pray for peace, you pray for guts and tenacity. You pray for boldness to say the things that really need to be said and for the courage to make the changes you know you need to make. True peace is not just the absence of war.
This is not peaceful!
In the midst of the ongoing turmoil and the knowledge that you need to push forward and not settle for passivity yet again, take time to cultivate rest. It takes a lot of energy to move forward, especially when facing things you have not faced. Anger management takes a strength you think you don’t have. Pushing yourself to acknowledge anger is draining.
You can only think about one thing at a time, so this season remember to take time off to connect at a deep level with yourself, your family, your faith in the peace that comes from God.
Reflections:
- In what way can being at peace mean more than just not fighting?
- In what ways can you cultivate peace in your heart while continuing to push yourself in the areas you need to grow in?
- How can you grow in being at peace with those who surround you?
Contributing writer Beverly van Diepen
If the holiday season has put extra strain on your relationship and you need assistance, contact Sandy to book a session with a certified divorce coach. Be sure to visit the blog for more information on separation and divorce.
