Christmas

December 17, 2025 

Christmas is Hard...

Every day is hard, but there’s just something about the holidays—especially Christmas—that makes grief so much more challenging. It doesn’t help that Melina was my Christmas girl. She’s probably the reason I have six oversized trees in my house. In fact, one of them was purchased on her birthday, the year we lost her. It’s hideous, yet perfection. It’s rainbow—and I don’t mean the lights, I mean the branches. It’s full of ornaments that we find, or our tribe finds, that remind us of Melina.

As much Joy as that hideous tree can bring me, nobody could have ever prepared me for a Christmas morning after losing a child. That moment forever took my breath away. How do you prepare a parent to look into their family room filled with Santa’s presents and see a hole? Her spot—empty. Right where she would sit to open her gifts. I can’t move the other girls, because they also know that was Melina’s spot. I’ve tried a bunch of little techniques over the years—Melina bringing gifts, or Cheeto presents—but nothing changed the hole that’s there.

I’ve never been someone who can dwell on the bad. It’s crushing. And Melina was never empty space. In fact, in life, Melina took up as much space as her sparkle could shine. Her attire, her laugh, her jokes, her inability to sing—yet she did it at the top of her lungs. She wore bows larger than life. She dressed in as much animal print and fur as this Momma allowed. Melina was never empty space.

It hit me yesterday that Melina left me with a choice.

“Mommy, you can choose to see the empty. Or you can choose to feel the grief.”

The empty is just sadness and pain. It does nothing but hurt. And truly, that isn’t grief—to me. Grief can be gut-wrenching, consuming, and feel like you’re drowning, but it’s purposeful. It’s pain you feel because of love. It’s love with nowhere to go. So as hard as it is, if I run from it or settle for the “empty,” I’m missing all of Melina.

Melina owned that room. Melina’s love is all-consuming. And forever, Melina will be in that room—now in the form of love. I’ll take that over empty, no matter how gut wrenching or all consuming that may be. I will never choose to miss a moment of her love because I know that as soon as I come up for air, the Joy is always there.