How To Manage All the Feelings of This Tough Year

By CL Bledsoe — NOT ANOTHER TV DAD

I’ve always loved Christmas. Winter is my favorite season, and spending time with family and friends during the holidays always fills me with hope and inspiration. Of course, this is a different year.

A lot of us — if we’re lucky enough to have family, can’t really be with them this year for fear of infection. Before the quarantine hit, I had a big trip planned to visit my childhood friends and family, whom I hadn’t seen in years. I planned to make a big event of it back home. Once a year, we get together and spend a long weekend, but I had to cancel my trip, postponing it for a year. It looks like I probably will have to postpone it again. There is of course some hope in America as we’ve just elected Joe Biden as a welcome alternative to Donald Trump, but our nation is still horribly divided, and it was a frighteningly narrow victory in the midst of so much death, hardship, and fear. There is much to be thankful for but so much to grieve.

My Christmas tree fell down. It happened in the middle of the night. I heard a strange twinkly crash and stumbled into the living room to find glittery devastation. I stood over it, unsure what to do, thinking this is it. I’ve gone crazy. This is the end. Then, I went back to bed. I was too exhausted to deal with it. It was so hard to put…