Hi Nora, I had to share a awful, terrible, no good, very bad holiday experience.

So my first Christmas Eve without my husband, I went to a bar.

My last Christmas was terrible.

If the holidays are hard for you, you're not alone.

But isn't this the most wonderful time of the year?

A time of wonder and amazement, a time of giving?

Of course it is, but like any good infomercial will tell you, wait, there's more.

For a lot of people, this isn't the happiest time of year.

It's a time of the year or at best it's a happy-ish time of year.

A time that is tinged with sadness, rusted with lingering trauma stained with the tears of

yesterday, you get it.

About six years ago on Christmas, my, I think I was visiting home and it was first Christmas

that my mom, new boyfriend, was going to send us, she'd ask if it was a case, she'd

come tonight, we said yes, we were awkward but we were looking forward to it.

I wake up Christmas morning and in my mid-20s, my brothers in high school, just the two

of us wake up and my mom is not there.

My, her, my friend is not there and we get a little note on the kitchen table that says,

went to ER, text me, love, mom, and in the middle of the night, my mom, my friend had a green,

bleeds, horrible, horrible headache, they went to ER and then I'm just sitting, a life

of flight ed out to a bigger hospital and spent lovely, lovely Christmas in the stroke

ward.

My brother and I were kind of like, what are we doing now?

...