She made me soup when I was sick. Gave me Christmas presents, even when I barely knew her. And for someone whose life was as chaotic and unstable as mine, she provided a solid foundation I could rely on.
“No, that’s not normal,” was a common thing she said to me. “You shouldn’t have to do that. You don’t have to put up with that. Have you talked to HR?”
And her advice quickly advanced beyond my work life and into my personal life. She had thoughts on my family, my friends, the people I dated, and somehow, was always able to give advice without making me feel like she was trying to force her opinion onto me. “This is what I think. What do you think?” she would say.
I was always allowed to have my own opinion, no matter what. She never tried to force me to see things her way, simply provided her perspective and let me draw my own conclusions about it.
During the period of my life when I met her, I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I believed about anything—religiously, politically, ethically, philosophically. I didn’t know what I wanted out of life. I didn’t know what I wanted my future to look like. I didn’t know where I belonged. I was floating in level 3 of Dubrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration, and I had no idea how to get out of it.
But I slowly began to realize that with Deidre, I always belonged. There was always room for me on her couch, at her kitchen table, with her family. She was my best friend. A lifeline when I was most alone.
Deidre died in 2019. It was sudden. Heartbreaking. I’m still heartbroken, years later.
2019 was a pretty shitty year for me. Deidre died. Then my cat. Then my great aunt. My grandmother. And the list continues. And, as you’ll remember, 2019 rolled right into 2020. I had next to no time to process my grief for any of the people I lost, and then people started dying all over again, but this time at a macro level. As in, hundreds of thousands dying from Covid.
My primary covid stress-management strategy was art. I drew and drew and drew. I locked myself in our bedroom and binged TV shows, and filled page after page of my sketchbook. It was my cave, my space where I hid from the realities of the world. And slowly, I realized that, perhaps, if I could use art to survive the pandemic, then I could also use it to heal from my grief.
So I drew the people I loved. Each person I lost, I tried to immortalize in art. I drew a pencil drawing of my cat. And one of Josh’s grandmother. My friend’s brother. One of my own grandmother. But for some reason, my heart wouldn’t let me capture Deidre. Every time I tried, it hurt too much.
I changed a lot in 2020. I fully crash landed in the 4th level of Dubrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration. If I’d thought I’d been there before, I was wrong. I was there now, not wondering who I was, but actively deciding who I was. And the whole time, I had Deidre front and center of my mind.
I wanted to be like her.
She was herself, not ashamed of her life, but not prideful. She existed fully as herself, or at least it seemed that way to me. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted to know who I was and what I believed, and I wanted to be confident in it. Confident enough to not apologize for my beliefs, confident enough to change my mind when I learned something new, confident enough to just be myself.
Fast forward to 2021.
I’ve never liked Christmas. And Christmas 2021 happened only a couple months after I’d had a medium-sized surgery. I was on a new medication, dealing with a lot of physical and mood fluctuations, and really didn’t want to be around anyone.
I’d already dialed back my participation with family holiday events significantly through the years as I didn’t believe in the religious foundation of the holiday, and I had struggled with a lot of the secular traditions too. I liked the decorations and good cheer, but didn’t like the over-the-top gift giving (partially because I grew up poor, and partially because I don’t like the stress of the reciprocity effect [social psychology]) and heavy obligations to perform other people’s versions of the holiday for them. I liked the food and the music, but not the extensive traveling and stressful family events.
Josh’s and my preferred Christmas day looks like this: sleeping in, making potatoes and green bean casserole and whatever meat Josh is in the mood for, and playing video games for 15 hours.
But in 2021, I was having intensely swinging feelings about the holiday. The lights and the music made me feel good, and then immediately reminded me of how much I disliked the holiday. I wanted to decorate our house, but I didn’t want to celebrate. I wanted to put up a tree, but I didn’t want to give gifts.
And in a fit of frustration, I said to Josh, “I just want to have it and not have it at the same time.”
To which he replied, “Why don’t you just make up your own holiday then?”
Because I married a genius, obviously.
The idea took root. With my own holiday, I could discard the elements of Christmas that bothered me, while participating in the overall culture of the season. I could celebrate something important to me at the same time everyone else was celebrating something important to them, without feeling like I had to lie about what I did and didn’t like about the holiday. I could have my tree, and eat it too. (Well, not literally haha, but you know me: I can’t resist a terribly mixed metaphor).
The question then became: What kind of holiday? What or who would I celebrate?
You can see where this is going.
