“This time of year, can be beautiful, but it can also highlight the absences we carry. I wrote a few words for anyone navigating Christmas while childless not by choice and without a partner. If this season feels heavier than it looks from the outside, this piece is for you.”

Christmas has a way of shining a bright light on the spaces in our lives we wish were filled. For those who are childless not by choice, and without a partner to share the season with, it can feel like an ache wrapped in tinsel. It’s a time when joy is expected, family is assumed, and love seems to be happening everywhere except in the quiet corners where we sit.

There’s a grief that comes with dreams unmet—of stockings that were never hung, of traditions that never got the chance to begin, of a hand that isn’t there to hold. And although this grief may be invisible to others, it is deeply, unmistakably real.

Yet there is also strength in making it through days that were never designed with your life in mind. There is courage in creating your own meaning, your own rituals, your own small sources of light. Even in the loneliness, there can be moments of gentleness—warm tea, soft music, a message from a friend, a reminder that your worth isn’t measured by what society expects you to have.

This season may be heavy, but you are not alone in carrying that weight. And your story—exactly as it is—is still full of value, hope, and quiet resilience.