Christmas Time Is Here and I Choose Love

 
 
It’s that time of the year again. The parties and shopping are well underway and so is the urgent need to be happy. Christmas has always been a difficult time for me mentally and emotionally. It’s the one season of the year in which everyone desperately wants to feel loved; and yet many of us who grew up in dysfunctional households don’t know how to accept love, or allow ourselves to be loved.

We didn’t receive the love we needed as children and consequently we never learned to love ourselves. This is the real problem. Recovery has taught me much about me and self-love. Looking back now, I see that over the many years and Christmas seasons of my life I was in fact loved by many people. But I never acknowledged that love because I didn’t have the inner-tools to accept that love. I didn’t know how to accept it because I didn’t know how to love and accept myself.

So I learned to play the victim of the holiday season. I ached inside and moaned and groaned to myself every Christmas about how unlovable I was. I was always depressed because I convinced myself that no one cared about me. Well, that wasn’t true, and in many ways it was all an act.

Love has to begin with me. I have to be the first person to love and accept me. I learned this early-on in Recovery. Mentally I sort of got it, but emotionally I couldn’t fathom loving myself. So my self-pity and unhappiness continued each Christmas.

But no more. I’ve finally gotten it. By learning to love myself better, I realize that I truly do have a choice when it comes to anything—including Christmas. And I can choose to be as happy or as miserable as I desire. Expectations about how Christmas should be no longer rule my heart or head. I choose to accept every moment and every person just as they are. And I choose to find joy in what IS.

I also choose to accept the love that is offered me. It may not be offered by the people I most want to offer it, but love is love and all love is good. I will accept it all because I am worthy of love and of offering love to others.

This Christmas I choose to be happy by accepting every ounce of love. I also choose to be happy in each moment that I must be by myself. I can feel joy in every moment alone even if I’d rather be sharing the moment with someone else. And I will find joy in each moment I do spend with others, even when those others aren’t the persons I’d most like to be sharing each moment with.


And if I catch myself drifting backward into a dark, cold snowbank of old self-loathing or self-pity, I will call on my Higher Power to catch me and pull me back to mental and emotional sanity. And all will be good.

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