What comes to mind when you think about the holiday season? For some of you, this time of year is associated with uplifting memories, delicious food, and pleasant company. For others, this time of year is associated with discouraging memories, scarce food, and bitter loneliness.
This season is anticipated, and it is dreaded. It is discussed with excitement, and it is avoided. For many of the parents at Maddie’s Place, they experience the latter of these. Many of them can’t remember a merry Christmas or a happy New Year. Instead, they remember feeling silenced by shame at the family dinner table, their appetite quenched by addiction. Or maybe some remember Christmas on the streets, huddling together with their peers trying to stay warm.
These are some of the reasons we find it quite important to have a family advocacy team at Maddie’s Place. Within the team are individuals with those lived experiences of difficult holidays wrapped in shame. It is from this inside perspective that Maddie’s Place can meet these parents right where they are and ensure that the holidays in our home can be a space of redemptive healing.
And how do we do that? We look for ways we can be intentional.
For instance, this year, our team has orchestrated several intentional acts to make the holidays just a little brighter for our newly sober parents.
Our staff have decorated the facility with cheerful lights and joyful garlands. They have coordinated and assisted with a couple of holiday photoshoots for the parents and infants. They have gone ice skating and built gingerbread houses. In past years, parents shared a meal with staff on Christmas Day and opened gifts under the tree.
Mary lived at Maddie’s Place during the holiday season with her son last year. Having been introduced to drugs at a young age, it was her first sober Christmas.
“Past Christmases, I didn’t have a Christmas because… it was just another day of using, it was nothing different. But when I was at Maddie’s Place, it was very special.”
She remembers how joyful everyone was, wishing her a merry Christmas and loving on her and her son.
“All the people at Maddie’s Place, they care for us like family.”
These holiday practices may sound rudimentary. Many of you have probably built gingerbread houses or gone ice skating more times than you can count. But it means the world to our parents. Because it might be their first sober holiday, or their first gift, or their first time in a loving home for Christmas after so many years on the street.
We can never fully understand everything those fighting addiction have been through. But what we CAN do is wrap our arms around them and hold them tight. We can encourage them in their parenting journeys. We can remind them of their value as a person. We can place a present underneath the tree.
As we continue in the holiday season, we look forward to finding those small ways to help redeem the brokenness that has held some of these individuals captive for far too long. Perhaps there is someone in your life who needs that too.
This blog was posted on December 20, 2024.
Questions? Suggestions? Email me at emma.jones@maddiesplace.org