Building a new life and memories at Christmas

We have a lot of friends who are exmembers and that's great. It's great to have people who understand the deep, dark past. But it's a sign of moving on that this Christmas some of our closest friends we're inviting over were never in the group. They do know all about out past and think that's very interesting, but they're coming for Christmas because most of all they are simply dear friends.

Finances are tight this Christmas and bills high but what can I say? Thousands of dollars in bills that are due and it sure would be nice to have the money in hand to pay them. Our kids don't expect a lot of presents at Christmas -- I'm glad they're not caught up in that. In the middle of the tightness we do have a chance to build new memories with new friends.

My brother and his wife and all their kids are coming over and you know, it feels good to be able to be a host and have just a bit of a margin of extra that you can have friends and family over. After we left, we struggled for so many years. At first when rent was due at the end of the month, we'd have to look around our small apartment and figure out which piece of furniture we could afford to partwith, and then we'd take it out and sell it to a 2nd hand store. We're past that stage now and things promise to get better.

We're still working too hard for too little but at least Christmas is a time to realize that the same old bad memories have no power anymore. We dont' have to keep our kids out long hours on some Christmas push. No leadership is going to come and break up our family and send our kids away at Christmas. No new wine is going to come that makes us wonder what we're doing in the group. Despite the hardships, we have a chance to build new memories, go to other people's houses and eat their cookies and drink their wine and spend time with our family.

And the good thing is, it does get better than this.