charity

It is a season of darkness, this time of year. This week I haven’t seen daylight much at all, what with the late sunrise and early sunset and dark, rainy afternoons. It affects me deeply, and I am counting the days until we are seeing more daylight each day. At the end of the day, a dark sky isn’t much of anything; I have so much to be grateful for, so much comfort and joy.

This time of year is full of festivity and gifts and food and loved ones, yet it can be such a hard and lonely time for so many people, for so many reasons. Perhaps it’s seasonal blues, the loss of a job or a relationship or a loved one that has one feeling alone. Or maybe it’s a general loneliness, being away from home or not having a home at all; the joy we’re surrounded by often magnifies the pain and creates confusion on how we are supposed to feel.

Even in my own excitement about the season, grief creeps in. The smell of sap as we decorated our tree instantly brought me back to being a kid and longing for that feeling of having a whole family around me. And forget about the Night Before Christmas; my father read that every Christmas Eve until the year he died, and I cant even be in the room to hear  it now.

When Santa reads it this Sunday at our Breakfast with Santa event for work, I’ll be biting my lip hard to keep the tears back. I love this time of year, but it can be so very hard and I know that my own hard, compared to that of others, is so very easy.

With all that said, finding the light is something I vow to do during these dark days. I am helped by the ability to help others, to donate to charities or to check in with those I know who are feeling blue. I know I find more joy in buying gifts for children in a shelter than I do receiving things for myself.

I’m inspired by movements like 26 Acts of Kindness, which for the 26 days leading up to the anniversary of that horrifying, dark  day in Newtown, features one of the people who were killed that day and simply asks followers to perform an act of kindness in memory of each person. Little beacons of light all gathered together can make a light as bright as the sun, I know it’s true.

Simple pleasures like cups of tea, the light of a candle, a little bit of yoga, or a favorite song help to help light those candles in our hearts. . . The season isn’t about piles of gifts or who can cook the most food, but more about love and appreciation and reaching out to those who need it most, whether they ask for it or not.