You have the opportunity to recast your story around the holidays.
I did not want another generation to grow up with sadness and disappointment around the holidays. I wanted any kids that I could have to be happy about the holidays, whether it’s Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and any other holiday that you celebrate towards the end of the year. The idea is, you know what, it’s going to be sweet, it’s going to be loving, it’s going to be kind, and it’s going to be fun.
And so, for those of you, whether you’re a woman or a man, and you’re thinking, you know what, my memories around the holidays are just not that happy. Yes, that may be true. They might not have been happy, or they were not happy as you see them, but that was just an experience for you to learn from.
You Don’t Have to Continue to Suffer
You have the ability to take that experience, work through it, heal from it, and create a new reality for yourself, so that you’re not living in what happened 30 years ago, or what happened 40 years ago, or whatever the number of years ago. You don’t have to continue. If you suffered that experience, you don’t have to continue to suffer.
It is a choice, and that doesn’t negate that it happened. It doesn’t negate that your dad failed, that he didn’t do what he could have done to make you happy as a child at the holidays, and it doesn’t negate any of that. But what’s important is that despite the fact that you had that experience, you grew through it, and now have the capacity to create a new reality for yourself.
I Can Have as Much Fun as I Want
In the book, I talk about the fact that I had a very intense childhood, and then now I say, I can have as much fun as I want. I can create as much fun I can enjoy. If I felt that my father never bought me this, or never bought me that, I can buy it for myself now.
You can do the same thing. It’s your choice. And while those feelings are very, very real and very, very sad, one of the things that I say this often is that I’m not a psychologist talking to you about what I heard somebody say.
My Experiences Are Where I’m Coming From
I’m somebody who actually had the experience of having less than ideal holiday experiences with my dad, about him failing to show up, about him failing to even buy me what I thought were the gifts that I would have wanted. Just very sad. And I haven’t told the whole story because, of course, I want you to buy the book and read it so you can hear the story.
But I want you to know that my experiences are where I’m coming from. And you have the opportunity to recast your story around the holidays, to choose to step out of, it wasn’t a fun time for me, it wasn’t positive experiences.
You can create new experiences. And like I said, both of the women that I speak about in the book — those aren’t the only two, but two of them that I speak about in the book, Louise Hay and Edwin Gaines — both of them were women who had suffered deeply in their lives. And as a result of that suffering, they were able to come to the place where they spiritually were able to heal themselves and create a new reality.
Both ultimately became very, very successful women.