A Happy S.A.D. Non Christmas

I haven’t liked Christmas since I was a kid. When you grow up and realise that your life doesn’t get better from any gift no matter how amazing or expensive, as it doesn’t change anything else and how others treat you the other 364 days of the year, or how you feel inside.

Then you have kids and sort of get sucked into it- the 'you have to trick kids into believing a mysterious man gives them presents by their bed and the fact you ‘have’ to celebrate Christmas or it won’t be fun for them otherwise'- and the implication of how can you ruin that for them by not doing the same? Comments everywhere, from family to every commercial on the planet…

Yet it’s me that buys all the presents every year, (even those supposedly for me!) , works out the best we can afford with finances we have (I have never understood the paying back the credit card all year theory of Christmas) so that everyone gets something ‘they deserve’. 

Trying to work out what to buy to spend the same amount of money on each child, buying the presents for the family who don’t need them (well not now anyway- I can think of times of the year I could buy a gift and it be much more wanted, needed and appreciated), orders and buys the food, the wrapping paper, the tape, the cards. Puts up the tree, the decorations, the lights (and packs them all carefully away each January)…basically exhausts herself for one supposedly ‘special’ day. For a religion I don’t even belong to or believe in.

And I won’t mention the expectations on this day having to be ‘perfect’. The perfect family day that you can’t ruin (with your stroppy redhead temper!) Every year I don’t know if it’s the darkness, the coldness, or Xmas which makes me feel S.A.D (Seasonal affective disorder)?? …so bollox to all of it. I don’t have the perfect family and I certainly don’t have the perfect attitude.

And then I had a brain tumour…

Last year (7 months after it was removed) I didn’t do much- apart from bought a few gifts online and then sat in my newly gifted onesie all day, thinking:

‘Fuck it, I’m alive- what else matters?’ 

We didn’t have a tree or lights as I couldn’t get them down from the loft even if I wanted to… and I didn’t. Dave cooked as he chose to. I sat on the sofa bed in the lounge for much of the day reading a book while others watched TV. (yes we were so lazy we put the sofa bed down!) Just sitting in peace, the more ‘normal’ the day was the better.

But I still felt I was lying to myself, saying this crappy saying. I don’t wish someone a ‘Happy Christmas’ – I want them to be happy inside always, all year, be true to themselves, authentic, loving, understanding… not just a fake ‘aren’t we all happy’ bolloxy day.

So this year this is it. I am not doing any Christmas. I do feel a little guilty that ‘should be doing something for Roan our 11 year old, but I have decided the gift of him seeing my authentic self will be better than any present I can buy him. I am not buying cards, or presents, or putting up any decorations. I have said that I don’t want gifts for Xmas.

If anyone feels the need they can buy me something any other time of year. Give me a gift when I need it, means something or not when you are ‘supposed to’!

If my family want to do anything, I am not stopping them, just I don’t want to.

I feel like I might somehow celebrate the winter solstice on the 21st December. I have internally celebrated it for years- that shortest day which means light can only get brighter again. The darkness is at its worst and is going again from the increasing of healing sunlight. This slightly took on a different meaning last year when I lit a whole tray of candles to celebrate the darkness of a brain tumour fading from my life, as I sat and cried in a candle lit room.

This year I will give Roan a present that day, to stop my guilt that I cannot just do nothing for him. I might decorate a few candle holders. I might not. I’d consider putting lights up, but I can’t be bothered to get them, and know they would be then up until new year… So my salt lamps and candles will do.

And it’s the 1st December tomorrow- and I’m not dreading it! I’m just partly hibernating, slowing down, wanting to keep warm and rest and counting down the days until it starts getting brighter again.

I CAN change

It’s lyrics again. I love the lyrics in songs probably more than I love the music. Well maybe except for when you can feel the passion of someone playing amazingly and the instrument is speaking without words instead.

Yet again it was ‘Free bird’ that got me, but this time it wasn’t the instrumental part, it was the words “I can’t change” and “…this bird you cannot change”… and at the same instant it made sense as to why this is often played as a funeral song.

The person cannot change- so they die. End of. They couldn’t change… their habits for a healthier lifestyle. They couldn’t change their hate and anger. They couldn’t change their job, their debt, their priorities, their addictions, their risk taking, their fear, their belief system, the belief of others, belief of what’s ‘normal’ … change themselves.

Of course this won’t apply to everyone, there will be some who changed nothing had treatment and are ok, and there will be people who have accepted their death. Learned their life lessons and feel death is just a part of the bigger picture, but from the people I know who have died this seems a minority.

But there are so many stories of people with a ‘death sentence’ of all types of cancer, Parkinson’s, leukaemia, MS etc who have healed, have changed. They changed themselves. Some will have done so alongside the conventional treatments (if this feels right and healing for ‘them’, then it’s right- I had surgery after all!) But many will have, supposedly, ‘spontaneous remissions’ without any chemotherapy, drugs, surgery or radiation. Yet they fully changed their lifestyle, their diet, their toxic emotions or whatever was needed for them.

If what you are doing now has given you an illness then expecting to just take a pill, continue as before and expecting to heal is madness!

You need to change something be it your toxins you absorb or eat, your lifestyle or attitude. To expect to stay the same and heal is just insanity. As the quote says: 

“Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”

I know I did change after I found out I had a brain tumour. I addressed and lost many of the unconscious beliefs I had about myself and others. I cried for weeks releasing trapped emotions I had (as well as doing energy release techniques), I addressed every single reason possible as to why and how I manifested this tumour into my life. Even those emotions that hurt- a lot. I don’t believe I was a victim, I never felt something outside of me was to blame. 

I’ve had this experience for a reason, for lessons (and written them in my book). 

I changed my (already ‘good’) diet, I meditate, I get healings, I use the outside gym near me daily (I’d never been there before), I addressed my fears… I’m still working on them, on ‘me’. This will be a lifetime of change. Listening to my body.

Maybe more people will also realise they can change? And hopefully before they get ill in the first place.