Wendy K. Laidlaw

I never made the connection.

It was a time of year when the idea and fantasy of family was at its highest for me.

I would watch all these heartwarming Hollywood films.

I got caught up in the stories of love and happiness and joy.

I craved this fantasy to be real.

I had a hunger for the perfect Christmas to be as it was portrayed on the big screen or TV.

The Christmas that was supposed to be a time for family to come together to celebrate each other and be happy.

A coming together in love and abundance and good cheer and laughter.

Yet as much as I sought this fairy tale, the reality was somewhat different year upon year upon year.

It was more the case of a fraught family forced back together under the guise of let's pretend to play Happy Family Christmas.

Sandwiched close to relatives you barely knew or spoke to throughout the year and surrounded by those specific poisonous folk, you know the ones I mean, who know how to cause a dreadful atmosphere around the table that you could cut with a knife.

Yet if and when you directly asked if everything was OK, they would reply yes and clearly it was a no.

Year after year, the facade and the play of family went on because it was Christmas.

Maybe it's because I work with so many beautiful, incredible women now and help them end their endometriosis naturally and who have been such dedicated students and learned how to connect with their own bodies, mind and past to become pain free.

that I'm more aware than ever of what impacts a person on a deep subconscious level.

How a student recently said to me that in studies it was found that when children were asked who in the whole wide world they would want to spend their time with, if they could choose anyone, they always answered their parents and their parents said that too.

So you have these generations upon generations of people naturally seeking attention and approval from their parents and their parents from their parents.

and never ever quite getting what they seek, whatever that need or needs may be or have been.

Christmas sadly is when all those people and those unmet needs come together, all these people like children and grown-up bodies desperate for that love and adoration and attention they never got growing up, for some just basic human need of appreciation and approval.

feeling the pressure of happy family Christmas with no resentments and emptiness shoved down for the day or two that tradition has pushed them together for, in some cases to endure.