Navigating the Holidays After Divorce: 3 Steps to a Fresh Start
by Sarjae Irving
While Christmas is often filled with joy, love and family celebrations, it can get complicated when navigating a new divorce. Every Hallmark movie might idealize the holidays as a picture-perfect season but the reality is separation is a part of many Canadians’ lives. Still, this doesn’t mean you still can’t have an amazing Christmas with your family — it’s just that the transition from shared household to divided festivities requires proper planning to ensure a positive experience for all involved. Here’s how.
Be Proactive
The first tip on navigating the holidays is to take a proactive approach and create a schedule, says Dr. Vinita Puri a Toronto-based registered Social Worker, Accredited Family Mediator, Coach and Consultant with expertise in educational training and group facilitation.
“Preparation and mutual respect is key when creating an effective co-parenting schedule, especially around the time of the holidays,” she says.
Navigating the Holidays After Divorce
The schedule could include sharing the actual holiday, for instance, one parent gets the child on Christmas Eve and the other on Christmas Day or alternating the holidays each year. Another tip is to practice self-care. “You’re also trying to navigate loss, pain, and grief. Self-care is extremely important when going through divorce and even more so stressful around the time of the holidays,” says Dr. Puri, who also encourages newly divorced parents to set expectations. “This way, the child/children are aware and understand that this is the new reality,” she says.
“It may be difficult, but these steps can be taken to ease the transition, along with surrounding yourself with loved ones and creating new traditions.”
Plan to attend or not
Navigating the Holidays After Divorce
The concept of honour and shame may be a cultural factor that newly divorced parents take into consideration when it pertains to invitations to holiday events that involve both parents. In essence, there is still a lot of stigma and shame around divorce in many communities. “If divorced parents are a part of the same circle where people accept that divorce is normal and that people may no longer be compatible, the divorce should not be a hindering factor of whether to attend a holiday event,” says Dr. Puri. She further emphasized that once the divorced parents themselves are willing and able to control their emotions, she would encourage both parents to attend and/or continue to host holiday gatherings.
Practice Self-Care
When trying to navigate the holidays as a newly divorced parent, Dr. Puri says that “the underlying factor to take into consideration is where the parents are in The Grief Cycle proposed by Elisabeth Kubler Ross.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief. According to Ross, the stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Depending on the why and how the separation transpired, will impact the level of communication between the divorced parties, whether high conflict lingers, or whether there is a mutual understanding to put the needs of the kids first to ensure the transition is as smooth as it can possibly be.
Navigating the Holidays After Divorce
While it will be a difficult time for the divorced parents, since this may be your first time away from your child/children for the holidays, Dr. Puri suggests that you, “use this time to try and engage in both body and mindfulness activities such as yoga and meditation. Be kind to your body and have an efficient sleep regime. At the least, spend time doing things that make you happy with family and friends so you are not alone and lonely these days.”