Holiday Reflection: The Moment I Chose Myself

A Behind the Mirror Seasonal Edition

Preface

The holidays stir something different in all of us.  Even if your life looks nothing like mine, I hope this reflection finds the part of you that’s growing through something quietly, bravely, and in your own timing.  Wherever this season meets you, may these words land gently.

As the holidays approach, I’m reminded that this season isn’t just Christmas lights and celebration.  It’s emotional. It’s layered. It’s a time when the past meets the present, sometimes gently… sometimes painfully.

For me, the holidays hold the moment that changed the entire trajectory of my life.

December 11th, 2021.

A date that will forever split my life into “before” and “after.”  A date that became the beginning of my healing.  That night, I made the hardest, most transformative decision I have ever made.  I asked my ex-husband to leave.

I remember sleeping across the door with my babies in my room, praying he wouldn’t come back.  That moment cracked something open, not just fear, but truth.  It became the doorway to the woman I was meant to become.

Ever since, the holidays have held more than celebration.  They’ve held growth.  Grief.  Reflection.  Rebirth.  And a deeper happiness than I ever believed was possible.

Because the universe doesn’t grow us through ease.  It grows us through small whispers,  messages that keep returning, and finally a pain we can no longer silence.

Pain has many origins.  Our choices, someone else’s choices, or life itself.  But whatever its source, pain eventually becomes a threshold.  A moment of truth.  A place where we choose whether to stay as we are or rise into who we’re becoming.

The holidays have their own kind of magic.  A softness.  A reminder of what matters.  Seeing the season through your children’s eyes is one of the greatest gifts of adulthood.  But my first Christmas without my children… that morning ended in tears.  Saying goodbye to them after the holidays was one of the hardest moments of my life.

Yet when the house grew quiet again, something shifted.  In the stillness, I felt a small, steady voice rising inside me.  A voice I had ignored for years.  A voice that belonged to the younger version of me, the child who still believed in magic, hope, and new beginnings.

So instead of drowning in the sadness of not having my kids with me, I chose her.  I chose to nurture the girl inside me.  To pour into my healing, my mental health, my body, my spirit, and my truth.  Because when we return to ourselves, our joy, our needs, our soul, the world finally gets the real us.

Our children, our friends, our passion, our work… they all receive the version of us who is alive, present, and becoming.

So this holiday season, here is my wish for you…  If you’re in a season of healing, transition, or unknown… get quiet.  Return to yourself.  Connect to the child inside you, who once believed anything was possible.  Let your quirks shine.  Let your dreams breathe again.  Allow yourself to feel joy without needing permission.  Choose to live from that embodied space.  Not from the fear of the unknown, the weight of your circumstances, or the pain of what feels uncertain.

Because it’s in that energy, joy, safety, curiosity,  that we begin to manifest our truest life… no matter what the mirror is reflecting back right now.

If something in these words touched you, trust that it’s guiding you somewhere true.  Here’s to choosing ourselves, softening where life asks us to, and rising into who we are becoming, together.

Wishing you a season filled with softness, truth, and the kind of magic that rises from within.

Holiday Song

🎵 “Grown-Up Christmas List” — Amy Grant