“I feel like a melting snowman,” I told my husband en route from my parents’ house in Morton Grove to my sister’s in Evanston, as we made the rounds on the day after Christmas, saying our final goodbyes before heading back east.
That was my best attempt to explain to him why I’d spent pretty much the entire trip crying, triggered by everything from the refugee snakes in “Zootopia 2,” to the beautifully “woke” sermon at Christmas Eve service in my childhood church, to the tiny Cinderella onesie and baby Yankees beanie in my sister’s pile of gifts (new niece due in March; her dad’s from New York 😉), to lamenting current events with my mom, our family’s OG “radical left scum,” to random sentimental songs on Holly, or Jolly, satellite radio stations, to the usual memories of Christmases past and loved ones lost…
J-P and I have been married 18 years, so he’s used to my high sensitivity and seeing me “emote,” as he puts it, but this was…extra. I couldn’t hope to make him understand when I didn’t totally get it myself, but now that we’re back in Bucks County — as the calendar turns to 2026, I’ve now lived in Pennsylvania longer than I did in Illinois 😳 — my whole “thawing out” analogy makes much more sense.
I will sit in my puddle and unpack my annual “homecoming” with my therapist today in our first session of the new year. That — meaning, going to therapy — has become as much a holiday tradition as Mom’s Mannheim Steamroller CDs, Dad’s Chicago sports tree, feasting on Honeybaked ham and Bakers Square pie, or watching “The Twilight Zone” marathon on the SyFy channel…
We actually switched it up/got with the times this year and started binge-ing “Stranger Things,” and shoot, y’all, if I was hoping to give my poor tear ducts a break or start conserving Kleenex, this was definitely not the way…
I think it’s clear I can never look at anything, be it life or art, in the same way since I got sober and became a therapist. Getting through 2025 required me to sort of freeze up, holding in my emotions and holding off on fully processing them so I could hold it together for my clients. I’ve been practicing privately for a year and a half, and while the work is unquestionably rewarding, it can be hauntingly devastating, too.
When my 10-day holiday break arrived, it must have signaled to my nervous system that it was safe to unclench and start to let it all go. This is a pattern I’ve seen throughout my life (that I probably should work on changing…); I go into Survival Mode when I’m at school/work, and because “the body keeps the score,” I then completely crash — and often get sick — on vacation.
So, I can see why I’m definitely not “playing with a full deck” when I dive back into my family system, which presents its own set of emotionally draining challenges.
Going home — or, let’s say, back where we came from — is naturally a jarring experience for all adults. In my case, it means navigating a mix of old and new family dynamics in busy, noisy social settings over the course of several consecutive days; I am an introverted fish out of water feeling even more “dried up” without the “liquid courage” I leaned on so heavily throughout my younger years.
I am a 47-year-old woman with 6 1/2 years of continuous sobriety (as of this Wednesday, Jan. 7). I am miles away, physically and mentally, from the stereotypical “gifted” eldest daughter, the “big fish in the small pond” of Niles Township public schools, who built her childhood identity around achievement and responsibility and derived her self-worth from performance and adults’ approval.
I was extremely naive and emotionally immature when I moved away, Northwestern journalism degree in hand, to work as a newspaper sports reporter at age 22. By living through addiction and recovery later in life, weathering two career transitions that included countless rejections and multiple layoffs, then completing three years of grad school, an internship (at age 43) and earning hardly any income to speak of from 2022-2024 before landing my current job (🙏🏻), I was forced to finally grow up, into someone else, someone other than what was expected.
Damned if I have a handle on who that is when I go back to visit family, though! 🤯
I feel pretty good about the person I’ve become when I’m in my space, even if that’s a bit of a black sheep (s/o to all the other middle-aged childfree folks out there!) But it’s like my body senses some kind of danger when I’m in theirs, with an old soundtrack playing in my head: “You are supposed to be playing a role/setting an example.” “You are nothing if you don’t perform exceptionally.” “You are a disappointment/failure…”
I think this year, that sense of not-quite-rightness felt even more dramatic, after all we’ve been through as a society, and all I experienced trying to make my way as a therapist.
It wasn’t as stark a contrast as, say, the “normal” world vs. The Upside Down, but sitting around at family gatherings over the holidays, I did feel sort of paralyzed, or zombified, like Will Byers or Jim Hopper tangled up in, and strangled by, those netherworldly tentacles.
BTW, I’m only midway through Season 3, as of this writing….
Y’all, when I realized the Djo song from the 2025 Cubs playoff hype video was sung by Gator from “Fargo” Season 5, who is ALSO Steve Harrington… 🤯❤️ I added it to my new 2026 running playlist, and (brace yourself for shock!) I get choked up whenever it comes on.
Quitting drinking, working a program and getting into therapy (personally and professionally) has allowed my little family of two to settle into a relatively simple, quiet, drama-free lifestyle. No kids, no pets, just predictable routines, enough time and space time to process daily stressors in our own ways, and the freedom to pick up and get away when we need a break.
This has laid the foundation for my physically/mentally/emotionally/spiritually/existentially taxing career change, making it possible for an HSP in recovery to work full-time in a helping profession in the year 2026 in an increasingly upside down world. It’s also, given what fresh hell has appeared this morning in the news, somewhat comforting to know that J-P and I are both of sound mind and body, practiced in getting outside ourselves and connecting to something bigger, and in the habit of serving our communities.
It’s been a week now since we returned from Christmas “vacation,” and the hangover from the round-trip drive from Philly to Chicagoland has given way to the old familiar angst about work, health, bills…on top of new angst over WTF is happening to our country and WTAF we can expect from the year to come.
For what it’s worth, J-P and I did use our downtime this week to add a few important items to our calendar. First, an actual vacation to Burlington, VT, to ski and see our nephew — the same dude who was a newborn baby at our wedding 😳 — play college hockey at the end of January. Then in March, we rented an AirBNB in Washington DC for my big (and expensive) four-day psychotherapy networking conference. And, we’re hoping to add a return to Chicago shortly thereafter to meet the baby! 👼🏻
They say that “man plans while God laughs,“ and if I frame that laughter as being directed at the evil supervillains plotting to “mindflay” us all, when the power of love, hope, the human spirit, and supportive community is so much stronger…maybe I can believe that our weary world will end up rejoicing. 😢
Stranger things have happened…right?
Not to stretch the pop culture parallels too thin (what would any of my blogs be without that?) but I think most of us are a little bit Eleven, trying to use our powers every day for what good we can do, and when fighting evil gets too draining and we feel like tapping out, we need a Joyce Byers to sit by the pool/in the puddle and say, “I’m here with you; you’re not alone.”
With that, I’m off to see my therapist.
Jen Wielgus Journalism 