Hold On, Humans. Happy Holidays.

Yesterday, I put up my five year old Urban Barn Charlie Brown XMAS tree.

I treasure it.

The story that I’m writing here, finally writing today, has always felt a bit hard to describe…it always made sense in my head, but I’ve never been able to put it to page…maybe because it leaned on all my shit too hard…but this year I will indeed try to sound it out.

The first Christmas I was alone my heart was brutally cracked and while I felt thankfully tethered to my work (I will be grateful for that till I take my last breath, no hyperbole) I felt undescribably adrift in my life.

One afternoon, I sat looking out my window at the overcast sky that is the norm for winter in Toronto, and I realized that somehow SUBCONSCIOUSLY I felt like I didn’t deserve to have a real Christmas…that with my insides madly scrambled I was not worthy…that a happy holidays didn’t belong to me…and the conscious part of me was just operating, deciding and choosing based on that unspoken rule.

BUT I love Christmas…and ALSO realized that dark afternoon, that much to my chagrin, anger, sadness and a million other emotions that moved so fast I could not name them, I’d not had a happy one in years.

The next day, I was walking by the Urban Barn near my apartment, and I spied this not wholly attractive tree in the window.

I went in the store and bought the very one in the window and carried it home by it’s manmade trunk.

It felt like me at the time…a bit sparse but every little bare branch was hopefully lit up from the inside.

I put that tree on an old IKEA table that I could see from my bed and I would lay for hours during the nights staring at it.
I didn’t sleep well for almost two years…and this tree was the lighthouse that brought me to morning all through that December and part of January that I left it up.

The next year, I pulled it out and put it up in the same rental apartment, but THAT year it sported a few ornaments.
I’d finally gone into the basement of my house in Stratford and happily and painfully sifted through everything that was Christmas and unearthed the ones that I wanted to keep…including the one my mom bought me in 1983 that still bears the teeth marks of my cat, Mitsy.

Then the next year it went up in my old apartment for one month and on December 18th, 2020 when I moved into my new condo (after I sold my house and left my rental apartment) putting it up and decorating it was the first thing on my agenda to celebrate my continued belief in the forward movement of the rest of my life…even during a global health event…
…and because I fucking love Christmas.

For two years now, it’s sat in my balcony.

I have a lusher tree (but not much bigger) inside my condo with my new and old collection of ornaments…but this Urban Barn Charlie Brown tree is an important talisman.
This tree is a Christmas Card to myself that is a daily December (and part of November, let’s be honest) reminder that my happiness belongs to me…and always did…and always will.

This year as I unfolded the bendable branches I can see that it’s on it’s last legs…which caused my heart to ache a bit…but I think it’s got a few years left. : )

These pictures feature the tree’s journey from place to place.

To anyone out there who is suffering, feeling lonely or feeling like they don’t deserve light and happiness this holiday season…I am here to tell you that you deserve all the happiness and joy you can muster.

Buy a tree, clip a branch from a tree in the park (not a big one, I don’t want to piss off parks…but still), get something to remind yourself that you are worth a celebration.

And hold on.

You got this. ♥️♥️♥️

Happy Holidays.

S xoxo