Of Santa, Wish Lists, and The Desire to Not Be Alone…

 

Author, Lori Bryant Woolridge, in her recent article, Dear Santa, All I Want for Christmas, on the Huffington Post lamented her singleness, along with that of other friends and acquaintances who are not in lack an intimate relationship that during the Holidays Season she stated, “…with its emphasis on family traditions, gift exchanges, and togetherness can be tough for single ladies because it’s one of those times of the year (like New Year’s and Valentines) that when being alone can feel pretty lonely.”

She acknowledged that many women like she, had silently, if not openly stated having “…added a man to their Santa wish list.”

She then likened the results of this action mixed with the inaction of “…hoping and waiting...” with her attempt to lose weight, both proving ineffective.

I can certainly imagine how a person without a significant other feels lonely, most especially during the Holiday Season. 

My husband of nearly 30 years and our children, ages, 24, 19 and 12 years, while having held my near complete focus, have also formed the bedrock of what has become my purpose in life–a fulltime wife and mother.

But what is it about Christmas, and New Years that puts us most in touch with these feelings of loneliness and angst about lacking that special someone, emotions that Valentine’s Day bring directly and most obviously to the surface of our consciousness?

A licensed psychotherapist with a small practice and two works of fiction published, my job in truth since the birth of first child nearly a quarter of a century earlier has been that of wife and mother.

While these years have held 28 Christmases, seen 28 New Year’s come and go, with the and equal number of Valentine’s Days in between, much hard work, what most of us deem grunt work, or jobs that I liken to the task of “...grinding pepper...” has filled the space.

Jobs that fall under the term of grinding pepper included all those things a wife and mother, or possibly a husband, that no one wants to do, and no one else in the family will do, or as well as you do. 

Wiping down the counter, picking up the kids plates after they’ve left the table, washing clothes, taking out the dog in the middle of the rainy night.

Despite my education and training, I have only recently shed the anxiety of cringing each time a person asks what I do. Most often the person asking the question has been a woman–a person to whom I felt ashamed to say that I work for free.

I don’t know what it is about our society that has moved us into a place where we do no value that for which we receive no pay that we do for love and because we love those for whom we work.

Motherhood for most of us is a service we offer to our families out of love.

Somewhere along the way we began to believe that our career and professions could provide the sense of belonging and purpose in living that only families can endear and inject.  But families are about love. And jobs exist for one thing only–making money.

I have learned in my practice of psychotherapy that the very presence of money negates the possibility of love like that, which ideally exists and can only come from and one can and does experience through interaction with families.

Yes, I love my clients. I respect them and feel honored each time they offer me the opportunity to assist them in finding ways to improve their lives. It is a sacred pleasure that I hold in the highest regard and never take for granted.

And yet, I can and do never forget, my primary purpose in working with each client as a Marriage and Family Therapist is to assist then in improving relations with their family members. 

In short, my job is to eliminate their need for me, help them reach a point where they can live their lives to the fullest amid and with the love, joy, respect and all that comes with family.

Sadly, though, many people in our culture lack familial relations offering the hope and possibility of achieving this kind of deep interaction that at the root of all we do provides definition and purpose to our life and our living.

Lori Woolridge’s statement about the Holiday Season with its emphasis on family, gifts and being with those we love and who love us, speaks to the essence of what it means to be human.

No man or woman is an island. As such we crave and desire human interaction. We need it on an intimate and deep level.

“People who need people are the luckiest people in the world.”

We are in most of our interactions unfaithful to ourselves.

We do not acknowledge within ourselves that most basic and primal need, to not be alone, but to instead live in relationship.
It took me nearly 30 years to figure our what this line in Barbara Streisand’s song truly meant.

My husband has always know what it meant to him.

At 21-years-old I realized I was lonely and didn’t want to remain so.

So did my husband.

From that place of truth, often criticized by my fellow coeds, mostly women who urged me to at best remain cautious and careful of my then boyfriend’s intentions and proposal of marriage, I stepped onto a path with passion as my compass and guiding force.

I have often looked back.

But not because of anything lacking in my husband.

Rather I wondered of myself, the choices I made all based upon my need to not be alone to be with someone I loved and who loved me, to become what I have now learned is the one of the luckiest people in the world.

A person, who as one client described it, who knew then and still knows that I need people.

I need relationship.

I don’t want to be alone.