The following article is offered for free use in your ezine, print publication or on your web site, so long as
author resource box at end is included. Notification of publication would be appreciated. Title: Alone for Holidays? Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 667 Category: Personal Growth
ALONE FOR THE HOLIDAYS? By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
Being alone is a challenge for many people. This challenge may loom especially large during holidays if you are single or newly divorced and without family around you. Holidays are a time to share love, and many people end up feeling depressed when they do not have people around with whom to share love. If you are in this situation, what can you do to make holidays joyous rather than depressing?
The key phrase here is SHARE LOVE. Too often people think in terms of getting love rather than giving and sharing their love. They don’t realize that it is act of giving their love that is so very fulfilling.
Gail had grown up very lonely in an emotionally distant family, with parents who did not freely give their love and relatives who were also cold and distant. She had married an emotionally distant man, and after 7 years of more loneliness, had decided to leave him. This was her first holiday season alone.
Gail decided that she was not going to be alone and lonely again this holiday season. She did some research on service agencies that needed volunteers and discovered a women’s shelter in her area for women and their children who were hiding from physically abusive husbands. The shelter was badly in need of funds for food, which Gail didn’t have. What she did have was time to help gather food. Each day, after her job as a secretary, Gail went around to markets in her area until she found some willing to donate Thanksgiving dinners for mothers and their children. Then, on Thanksgiving Day, she spent her time at shelter cooking, decorating, serving, and having Thanksgiving dinner with these brave women who had left their abusive husbands to save themselves and their children. It was best Thanksgiving she ever had! By choosing to share her love with people who needed her, she felt filled with love.
