You spend Thanksgiving alone. Your kids have a holiday dinner with your ex-partner. All bets are off. That means you can make yourself a turkey and stuffing sandwich and eat it on the couch in your pajamas. You can order a pizza with toppings your kids don’t like and eat it straight from the box. It’s okay to sleep in, decline every invitation, or accept every invitation. Spend the weekend watching 10 hours of TV, or going for a walk in the woods, or going to a friend’s house for dinner, or staying at a hotel with a swimming pool.
If you came to me for a recommendation, I would tell you to do some networking and Solo time. When you’re a single parent, alone time isn’t always the gift that people sometimes think it is. Alone time, especially during a big holiday weekend, can feel like a threat—looking at a future where you could be alone forever. A weekend full of if what swirling around in your head. What if my children grow up and don’t want to see me? What if I never meet anyone? What if I become invisible?
I want to tell you not to do this to yourself because I know from experience that it doesn’t work. This addiction, sitting on the couch or lying in bed, feeling sorry for yourself, is an important stage. It may even be an inevitable phase.
The first year my kids left to go to their dad’s for Thanksgiving, I made myself really angry. I imagined them all sitting around the table, my ex-family and my kids, everyone content and happy and not missing out on my outstanding stuffing or pumpkin cheesecake at all. My kids don’t act like themselves and more like kids in movies. Comb your hair, clean your shirt, and have dinner without any complaints or bribes. I imagined their lives this weekend and it felt erased. Totally gone from their lives and somehow from my own.
I slept. I ordered a pizza, a lasagna and a Dairy Queen Blizzard. At noon I was watching HGTV and folding clothes on the sofa. Slowly, I started to like this version of my weekend.
Slowly—over the course of several Thanksgivings—I began to accept this new freedom that was foreign to me. I don’t have to wash the dishes. I don’t have to run to the grocery store with four cranky kids to buy last-minute dinner rolls. If I wanted to, I could go to a matinee and buy myself a big piece of popcorn. wearing sweatpants. If that’s what I want, I can go home and continue doing nothing. At first, the guilt made me blush at myself for allowing any joy in my heart because of their absence, as if I was denying them love by loving alone time.
Finally, I stopped blushing.
I remind myself that I spend most of Thanksgiving building memories with my kids, and these weekends sustain me. I don’t enjoy having time to myself during these holiday weekends. I miss my kids. I miss our life together and even a small part of me misses the family I thought we would become. Mom and dad, kids, dogs. extended family. I thought I would always have a feast for everyone. I’ll be filling my recipe box with all my best holiday hits. When my kids came home for Thanksgiving, we pieced together a pretty amazing replica of life. My recipe box contains my best holiday hits. We watched movies and played card games. If the weather is nice, we will have dessert by the campfire.
But I’ve also learned to love a different kind of Thanksgiving. Intermission. One of my regularly scheduled breaks is to stand up, stretch my legs, and look around. I was invited to a very adult dinner party at a friend’s house, where we dressed up and drank signature cocktails—a world I’d forgotten about. I take a walk in the woods. I go to parties or refuse to go to parties and feel like I can have hours of wonderful release.
I use those holiday weekends to recharge. Eating turkey, stuffed sandwiches, extra mayonnaise, extra gravy while watching tear-jerking melodrama on the couch. I cry sometimes. I’m addicted to it. You might also cry if you don’t have your kids on this big weekend. You may become addicted to it. I hope you do.
Because on the other side of that wallow, there’s another way. It’s really good to want to go this route. Enjoy the weekends when your kids are absent. Take the stress out of making someone’s holiday weekend memorable.
This year, if you’re a single parent with kids at Thanksgiving, embrace the beauty of invisibility. You don’t have to make anyone’s weekend special. Not even yours.
Jane McGuire is a contributing writer for Romper and Scary Mommy. She lives in Canada with her four boys and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she’s not traveling as much, she tries to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once, but she’s open to requests.
