Ma Maven | The Mom Without A Manual

With the holiday season fast approaching I thought it would be a perfect time to talk about co-parenting. This might be a hot-button issue for a lot of parents in a co-parenting situation like myself, I oftentimes wonder if others felt the way that I did when it came to sharing children for the holidays.

In my experience, for the last six or so years I have been splitting holidays with my child’s other parent.

When this agreement was first put into place I was a single mom who didn’t have any other children. I thought to myself, “Well it’ll be okay. It’ll all work out and I don’t care about holidays anyway.”. I’ve found with each holiday or birthday missed with my child a part of my love for celebrating has dwindled away. I had seen how hard it was on my child but I did not expect it to be so tough for me too. I knew I wasn’t the first single mother who had to co-parented, so why was this so hard to cope with?

Now that I am no longer a single mother and have had more children within my marriage I still feel like something is missing when we’re not all together. I want to mention this because at one point I began to believe that I would not care so much once my husband and I began having children. Since having my other two babies, I’ve been able to navigate my feelings of sadness and grief that at one time held a lot of emotional real estate in my heart and mind.

When I took a step back to really look at the situation I saw my mistake. For those who are wondering I would like to clarify that I do not view my child as a mistake though I did not go the “traditional” route of having children. The mistake I’m referring to is not being available emotionally to my husband and child in the beginning. I was so caught up on the time missed that I was inevitably missing out on more than I realized. I could have been creating new holiday traditions with my newfound family when we were together. Eventually, that is what I set out to do every season.

Now you’re probably wondering how we have been able to get out of the funk around the holidays and create new traditions. I must tell you with a lot of thoughtfulness and intentionality it can be done. First, we stopped putting so much emphasis on the DAY itself and instead have been enjoying our time together leading up to the holiday.

We are able to do this by going to seasonal festivals, watching holiday-related movies, cooking a special dish, and working on crafts together. I’ve also pulled out my phone more. Not to check out mentally but to take more videos for us to look back on when the holidays are over. My Google Pixel has this cool feature that shows me recent highlights and puts together a photo montage from “big events”. This has also helped different family members not feel left out when they can see the pictures or video for themselves.

When you think about it our children will someday go off and spend time with their own family, their spouse’s family, or even their friends. Not thinking twice about being with their old mom or dad. I know that’s what I did when I got older and started to develop a life for myself. I don’t think there is truly a right way to co-parent around the holiday’s but I know that I wanted to create lasting memories and avoid dumping my feelings onto those who love me every chance I got.

Since shifting my viewpoint, my child has the space to express to me what wants to do and what he looks forward to each holiday. Whether that means being with me or being with his father. This situation has already been proven to be difficult for all involved and I do not wish to add any more stress to my family if I could help it.

Are you co-parenting this holiday season? If so let me know how your family handles sharing holidays.