Why is it that Christmas and conflict go together like pavlova and cream?

The summer I decided to leave him I was reading a book by Junot Diaz called This Is How You Lose Her.

There was some light-hearted banter about my lack of subtlety, but by Easter the good humour had dissolved into tears and spit. By winter we were throwing dollar bills into the flames of relationship counselling, and later, lawyers. 

The separation was only a shock to one of us. At the Ministry of Justice parenting through separation workshop – which couples are advised to do individually – participants were informed that in any break-up there’s almost always a Leaver and a Leavee. The leaver, we were told, has usually been preparing to exit for two years, putting them ahead in the denial-anger-grief cycle by a full 24 months. 

This orientation served as a useful template for whakawhanaungatanga, and we duly went around the room identifying ourselves according to the simple formula: left/bereft. It felt like we were declaring sides in a battle in which there were no winners, only losers.

I remember asking the counsellor why more couples didn’t find ways to separate “together”. I did a bunch of research into co-parenting and conscious uncoupling and brought my findings to our sessions, including a detailed analysis of the moment Gwyneth Paltrow realised her marriage to Chris Martin was over. Unsurprisingly, this information served as an accelerant to the flames rather than a blanket.

Back then, my ambitious and misplaced excess of good faith even extended to imagining that we could maintain traditions that really only make sense as a family. Like Christmas and kids’ birthdays. Surely the cost of separating should not be the destruction of everything you’ve created?

It’s been six years since those counselling days and the ash has finally cooled, but I still wouldn’t touch it with my bare hands. Looking back, it wasn’t Gwyneth’s gentle and rational musings that sustained me through the worst years, it was the knowledge that I wasn’t the only one going through it. 

Early on, I joined a local network of solo māmā on Facebook, and discovered the myriad ways other couples were also separating atrociously. I made friends with a lawyer, an editor and a poet. The lawyer helped me craft responses to text messages when I was too emotional to string a sentence together. The editor helped me find a job so I could pay my bills. The poet sent me fresh drafts throughout the summer of my first Christmas newly separated. 

I was alone, but I wasn’t lonely. I felt equal parts reckless and relieved. Like I could finally breathe. I read the Good Wife’s Prayer by Karlo Mila not so much as poetry, but as affirmations from my own personal coach: “let me have the courage to not just live a safe life, or a good life, but a whole life.” 

That poem eventually became the collection The Godess Muscle published in 2020, but the first time I read it, alone in a tent after midnight, it was just a string of stanzas floating around in the blue light of an iPhone. 

In truth, the solo māmā group could be a tragic place sometimes. The circumstances that brought us together weren’t happy. Similar to a suicide bereavement Facebook group I once belonged to, the one thing we all had in common is that no one actually wanted to be there. Infernos were consuming everything, everywhere. We needed a veil of relative anonymity to share the pain and shame of what was going on with someone else who understood. 

At Christmas, the requests for advice and solidarity would increase. Everything from petty tales of point-scoring to protection orders without notice. One year, under the category of inappropriate gifts, there was a kitten. Ill-advised and unconsulted, the gift went against the conditions of the māmā’s tenancy, and she couldn’t afford a pet besides. When the SPCA reopened, nine days after Christmas, she was forced to pay $60 to surrender the kitten, by which time it had a name – and the cutest little pair of blameless blue eyes. The only thing worse than spoiling everyone’s Christmas were the private emails calling her heartless and cruel. 

People who’ve experienced what it’s like growing up between warring parents will have some inkling of the intricate array of terrible and toxic situations some children and young people are stuck in the middle of. It’s always the most vulnerable who have the least ability to protect themselves or to speak out, let alone be heard. The kids are the true losers in any conflict because they have such diminished agency.

There are battles over custody, access, money, new partners, responsibility, discipline, safety, health, ancient history and everything in between. All the battles, in some way, feel like battles over expectations. It’s almost as if conflict and Christmas go together like pavlova and cream. It forces contact between people with joint interests and shared whakapapa, at a time of huge pressure, when communication is already a shit-storm. 

I’ve always been fascinated by people who credit their parents for separating well and never speaking ill of each other. It’s not something I experienced as a child, nor is it something my own children will be able to say. But if it were the norm for parents to behave decently during divorce there wouldn’t be demand for support groups among strangers. Separations exist on a spectrum from “not ideal” to “completely fucked”. 

The number of people somewhere on that spectrum feels enormous, which is why a company developed an app to help mediate communication between mature adults. Our Family Wizard is like a lawyer, editor and poet all rolled into one. It promises to support parents to navigate everything from weekly schedules to doctor’s appointments to expenses. There’s even a tone-meter to help keep your communications “positive and productive”. I haven’t tried it myself, but if it does what it says on the box (and you can afford it, or the Family Court subsidises it) this app could be the magic bullet you’re looking for, especially if you have younger children. 

Those of us with older kids – who have their own phones and manage their own movements – have to find other ways to keep things positive and productive. This is often easier said than done. I think there’s an implicit belief that if your kids witness or experience family harm then you’ve flat-out failed as a parent. By that definition, I’m a total fuck up. But you can’t always protect your kids from the flames, no matter how hard you try to keep them back. If I could tell my newly separating-self one thing, it would be to not underestimate our kids’ capacity to understand and be compassionate. Being open and honest may not always be advisable or possible in every situation, but it does have its rewards sometimes. 

In the six Christmases I’ve been parenting solo, what I’ve come to learn is that it’s preferable that I don’t attach any big feelings to this one single day. There isn’t any app or textbook or celebrity advice that can fix relationships that have spontaneously combusted. There are no magic bullets. There’s just wounded people, usually doing their best, often badly, in complex conditions. 

At times, I’ve compared my situation to others and felt lucky. Other times I’ve felt envious, especially of those who manage not just to forge a new kind of relationship with their ex, but to laugh about who lost who, becoming tolerant – if not completely at ease – under the mistletoe together. 

As ideal as that might be, I don’t think it’s the norm. At Christmas, the pressure on solo parents is greater than ever, and the sacrifices and challenges even more invisible. We’re a naturally diverse community of mostly resilient, resourceful, hard-working and self-sacrificing people. Solo parents deal with unrelenting parenting challenges on top of financial and god-knows-what other pressures that can’t be spoken of, all in a world which privileges and rewards heteronormative nuclear families. There are so few places we can be open about how hard it really is, and to feel supported as opposed to judged and criticised for every decision we make. 

The one thing I can do, as minor as it might sound, is release my almost-adult children from the pressure to spend Christmas with me. They’re old enough to choose, and I consciously don’t want that decision to manifest as a lose/lose situation. Letting go of Christmas and the guilt and pressure and conflict that often comes with it, is not necessarily an easy (or even feasible) option for everyone, but in my personal circumstances, it’s been the right thing. 

Waking up on Christmas morning to an empty house with the afternoon stretching out ahead of you like the Desert Road is guts. There were years when the silence that descended after the kids left seemed unbearable. But it does get easier. 

For solo parents treading this path for the first time, navigating custody issues while the embers are still smouldering and wounds still fresh, kia kaha. I’m not sure if we ever truly stop negotiating with our own past selves and the closely held ideals of what we believe Christmas is meant to be, but you work at it.

This Christmas, my kids will go to their dad’s and I’ll stay home with my mum. I’ll read, knit, and probably send poetry to friends who need it. 

Maybe I’ll get out into the garden and do some weeding. I’ve recently discovered a use for ash: in small quantities, it makes a great fertiliser for compost