Here we are again, facing the darkest night of the year.  If we can just get through it, without the demons driving us mad, then tomorrow we can begin to journey towards light, redemption and transformation. 

Right now my girl is in bed, immobile, consumed with grief. She doesn't know why, she lacks the self-awareness. But I see that last year her mom sent her a christmas present for the first time, and this year none has come.  A gift or note may still arrive, or it may not.

"Does my mother know me, care about me, remember who I am? If my own mother--the one who held me as an infant, knew me as a  toddler and raised me until I was 6-- does not deem me worthy or even memorable, then why should I get out of bed?"  

Time has stopped in my daughter's world. Will the Sun return? Will there ever be light? 

I too am spending this day in my bed with the door closed. Immobilized with indecision about how to get through a beautiful holiday with a joyless child.

I cannot face the brown grocery bags still sitting on the kitchen floor with all the baking ingredients inside. I cannot plug the tree in again today because is a tree still a christmas tree when you have noone to admire it with you?  There will be no more music or movies or anything that reminds my daughter of her status as Outcast, outcasted as she was from all the people she knew and loved at such a tender age.

Please God, we must just get through this longest night and then the next few days, for only after that can we again dream of sunshine and hope to laugh again somehow.

But first there is tonight, filled with our deepest regrets, the error of our ways.  Looking at my life without benefit of the sun, I see all that I have screwed up. I want a joyful kid, a happy family, a love-filled home but instead I have a ghost of a child, a gloomy, cold and lifeless apartment. This is my life and the home that I have chosen and created and yet it is horrible--unbearable, really--and I am just laying here in self-pity and regret.  If I am not worthy of a better life, or capable of creating one, then why should I get out of bed?

Don't worry about me, though. I do realize that the sun will return, and in a few days I'll be able to see my life in a new light.  My daughter's brave struggle and her beautiful heart will be illuminated once more. I'll acknowledge my own valiant effort to do what is right and my home will again become cozy and warm.

I will not stay in bed forever--just until the light returns.