Holiday season makes me sad.

I cry a lot.

I felt lost.

I don’t seem to connect with what those around me are doing: packing gifts, sending love notes to their loved ones, writing resolutions for the New Years and the list goes on.

I’m far away from my family at this time.

But even when I was with my family during the holiday season specially I felt so alone.

I cannot quite grasp why.

I don’t connect with this time at all.

I like the colors and the lights around me outdoors but I cannot connect with the sense of a family.

Perhaps because family for me means heart to heart connection and presence then playing roles and celebrating only on the outside around a table filled with dishes.

Food is something I enjoyed when I was a kid during the holiday season but not anymore.

Or perhaps the best thing my parents knew was preparing lots of food as a substitute for the emotional food I so longed for my entire childhood and that I was never provided.

Not because my parents did not love me.

Now looking back with my grown up lenses I see two people that were starving of love and that were deprived of love in their own childhood by their parents who were also starved of emotional food.

I may never be able to create a family in the traditional sense of this world.

Because that concept failed in my own family.

It failed my parents and their parents.

It failed to generate a different family dynamics and paradigm in the heart to heart connections between each of us as humans come togather in this life to grow and evolve.

Doing all the crap we do as adults during the holiday season I just don’t seem to connect with that.

My inner child felt sad and tearful.

My inner child screams of a different kind of nourishment.

My inner child craves depth, presence and total attention, which she never received.

She received gifts perhaps and lots of candies and her favorite dishes but she always ended up feeling sad and crying alone in her bed.

Now I see her.

I acknowledge her.

She was a deep child.

She could not be fooled with superficial love and substituted love and affection.

She knew.

So on this holiday season, take time to connect with your inner child.

Take time to connect with your childhood, if you are feeling sad for some reason.

And instead of sending love notes or preparing dishes in the kitchen invite your parents out for a hot coffee or tea and tell them about your childhood needs and how you craved love and attention. Do so without the need to blame them.

It’s not their fault really.

Do so with compassion for them.

Just have a deep plain heart to heart conversation.

This season is to get closer to our lives and those who matter to us and heal old wounds.

This is why I felt so sad when this time comes and to me is a wake up call.