Even manipulators and child abusers love the holidays and that can complicate things. The most dedicated and covert child abusers absolutely love going the extra mile to make sure that appearances are kept up as much as possible, publicly and privately. Gifts are often a way of appearing to be a doting parent or smoothing over heinous actions that have no recourse.

People often become their traditions. Reliving the things that they did as children. Holidays are always clearly evident of tradition, and our love for repetitive, reliable nostalgia. But it’s not always nostalgic. For some people, the holidays can be like a favorite food that you ate at a restaurant as a child, but that restaurant no longer prepares it the same way or perhaps you have realized over time just how inedible the quality of their food actually was. I admire people who can see past this and create their own traditions and fond holiday memories. It’s easier for me if I avoid the holidays.

At the end of every year, I can’t close my eyes without seeing a scene from decades ago. Unfortunately almost every holiday, even in recent years, is always plagued with grief. So I avoid the reminders; the little things that bring holiday joy to most people, it all tends to remind me of a string of tragedy, loss, and a confusing reality. Child abusers and manipulators have to blur the truth of their actions. It’s difficult to be told how much you are cared for by someone who is also dismantling your identity piece by piece and burying each piece in foreign countries for you to later track down, dust off, and attempt to salvage. This time of year is often a reminder of those experiences.

It’s been years since I have spoken to my adopted siblings, but every Thanksgiving I still see my adopted sister and the lights of the ambulance through our bedroom window. I was not concerned about what happened to bring an ambulance to our house and two EMT’s in my bedroom. I was more concerned with the ambulance being called. Childhood Trauma is not always about the tragic event that took place, rather how we perceived it at the time. In my memory, this was not only a sad experience of someone trying to take their own life, it was highly confusing and filled with fear of the unknown. In traumatic environments we get a feel for the “norm,” even if that norm is chaos. Even chaos has a pattern.

It didn’t make any sense. We weren’t allowed regular access to medical help, what made them call an ambulance and bring them inside our house that no one was ever allowed in? Immediate panic set in. I had no idea what could be so bad that someone finally called the authorities. Emergency services were no different than police to us. We were taught to trust no one with their secrets and none of us would have compromised that, because we fully believed that their secrets were ours to keep. The entire situation soon made sense in my head, someone else must have called. But why? It was around 4:00 a.m. and my sister was not in our bedroom, all her jewelry was laid out across her bed, but she was gone. The EMT’s soon packed up their bags and also left. I sat on my bed and did not say a word. My adopted mother did not accept inquiries, I would have to figure this out on my own. 

A few hours later I pieced together what happened. My adopted sister tried to end her life the morning of Thanksgiving that year. It had been a difficult year and just a few weeks earlier we lost our grandmother, the only consistent and stable human in our lives. We were all individually gutted, individually lost in our perception of how to proceed. My adopted sister simply chose not to and her boyfriend at the time called 911. She was put on a 72-hour hold in a mental health facility and released with a notice of her upcoming court appearance. The state pressed charges against her for attempting to end her life. In court, it was agreed upon that if she attended counseling until released by a licensed therapist, that the charge would be dropped. She complied and did attend a year of counseling, the charge remained due to the fact that family therapy was recommended and turned down by my adopted mother. Sadly, so much of this story ends there. My adopted sister never got the help she needed or the ability to be open with her therapist because, secrets. She took on many of the same characteristics of my adopted mother and refuses to live in a reality where accountability is expected.

This particular memory of my adopted sister is very insightful, at least for me it is. It shows the power of perception. Over the years, the holidays have brought a lengthy series of horrific scenes. But this particular memory stands out because the authorities entered our home. There was no time to cover anything up or handle it themselves because even they had no idea that 911 was notified. The fear of what might happen, what would be next? Would they find out everything? Was this it? If not, would someone be violently punished for the authorities being called? Every second felt like a year until the EMT’s left, 26 years later I can still feel it as if it just happened. The panic that encased my entire nervous system returns every Thanksgiving, subconsciously. Conditioning a child to make them believe they are being protected while also violently abusing them, well, that creates some lasting confusion that can be triggered by the most random instances or even objects. 

Much like the overall lifestyle of someone who is perpetually battling the art of healing, the holidays also evolve over time. The anxiety shifts, the memories bring more answers each year, and difficult triggers become boundaries if we choose to be aware of what our behaviors actually mean in relation to our past. Those who sympathize with these feelings choose to face the holidays in their own ways. There’s no complete and total escape from it. It’s one of those unavoidable instances of trauma that no one escapes. Even the most common experiences of rejection, manipulation, and fear can be triggered during the holidays. Unfortunately, my entire calendar year is a reminder of dark experiences. I choose to not celebrate holidays personally because it causes more grief than joy. This is not everyone’s experience, many people are able to create their own traditions and holiday magic. I use the holidays to create extra space between myself and the world around me. It’s a time I use to quietly reflect on progress and what I can do to maintain the positive steps I’ve made over time before taking additional steps in the coming year.

This year brought new grief and loss around the holidays, like clockwork. And leading up to the New Year, I’m reminded of how this year started out. Minutes before this year started, I got the call that my biological mother would likely die soon. I spent the entire day before New Year’s Eve deciding if I was going to talk to her before it was too late. When my sister asked if I wanted to talk to her, I immediately said, “no.” And then I began to reconsider throughout the entire day until finally determining that my initial and quite firm, “no,” was the right choice. And that would be the last time I would ever make the choice to not speak to or set a firm boundary with the person that I spent half my life looking for. Our relationship wasn’t complicated, it was excruciatingly painful in every way. Her death forced a complex wave of both painful awareness and healing that I never expected to experience. It felt like two ripple effects simultaneously intersecting with each other. The separate instances of her leaving me in a crack house and then her dying, it had all began to intersect and create a new wave of calmer seas, breaking up the movement in the dark waters that seemed to have no ending for so many years. A year later, I’m grateful. I had avoided re-visiting certain past experiences as an adult. I could not go back to certain places willingly, I had to be forced to go back there. Her death air dropped me in a dark forest of past medieval battles. There are times in life when experiences feel as though they are changing everything. Embrace it. Coddling behaviors learned in chaotic survival and rejection will not produce a life that creates the peace that is required to be exactly who you desire to be. Too many people seem to think I am strong, I’m not. I am willing. There is a difference. Willingness is where we truly find our strength. The willingness to embrace the difficult. Learn from it. Change with it. Confront anything that prevents overall peace and self awareness with a pen and paper. Take notes and learn from it. Get comfortable observing yourself just as much as you observe the world around you. That is where you find your strength. Purely in the willingness to look for it. Improvement only comes from inspecting weakness, failures, and vulnerabilities. A survivor’s long-term obstacle is the perpetual nature of these actions. Unlike a viral illness, it doesn’t just go away and the need to continually embrace the willingness to remain self aware can be daunting. It’s a lifestyle choice, not a cure. 

Embrace it all. Pain can lead to truly amazing experiences if we are willing to artfully transform our lives rather than preserve the painful inhibitions of past rejection and fear.