The Quiet Sorrows We Carry Into the Holidays

by Rev. Sheri
Spiritual teacher, writer, and founder of Angel Messenger

Content Note:
This reflection includes tender memories of childhood abandonment, disgrace, and injustice. It is written gently, with healing and compassion at its center.

Holidays can stir both gratitude and grief, and sometimes the most meaningful healing comes from honoring both truths at once. This is one of those stories.

The holidays are often spoken of as a season of gratitude — a time of warmth, gathering, and celebration. And while all of that can be true, many of us also walk into this season carrying quieter stories, older wounds, and memories that rise with the colder air.

I am one of those people.

Thanksgiving has always been complicated for me. I feel a deep reverence for my Native ancestors, and I hold space for the truth of the history they endured. My spirit feels the echoes of what was taken — from families, from cultures, from children.

And, in a very different way, my own story fits into that season of loss and complexity, too.

The day before Thanksgiving — when I was still a little girl, a toddler who remembered far more than anyone realized — a courtroom decided that I would grow up without a father.

Blood tests weren’t considered legal evidence at the time. My mother did have a lawyer, but he was provided by the state and clearly unprepared — more a placeholder than an advocate. The proceeding that unfolded was not an honest search for truth. It was a spectacle, a humiliation, a witch hunt against a young woman who had no one standing beside her.

My father brought friends with him.
My mother stood alone.

A handful of strangers — a jury who knew nothing of her, nothing of me, nothing of the truth — listened to lies paraded across the courtroom. They deliberated for only fifteen minutes before deciding that my mother must be disgraced and that I must be fatherless.

Years later, when I finally looked up the court records, my mother was deeply ashamed of what happened in that room. She didn’t want anyone to see the documents. To this day, only my husband and I have seen them.

But I told her then — and I feel just as strongly now:

She had nothing to be ashamed of.
The court, the lawyers, the judge, the jury —
they are the ones who should feel shame.

They did not protect a mother.
They did not protect a child.
They simply pushed us into the low-income life they expected for people like us.

Healing my mother through her shame became part of healing myself. In comforting her, I confronted the wound in both of us — the wound of being discarded, misjudged, and left without protection.

Healing didn’t happen all at once. It unfolded in layers — some painful, some liberating — and each layer brought me closer to understanding myself.

That early experience shaped my entire childhood.
It shaped the holidays.
It shaped the part of me that knows what it feels like to be forgotten.

And it shaped the part of me that cannot bear to see any child feel that way.

There are days when I wish I could do more — when it hurts that my resources are limited, that I cannot give the way my spirit longs to. Sometimes it feels almost physical, as if my blood remembers its calling and wants to leap out of my veins to help.

Yet even in that ache, Heaven meets me with gentleness:

Grace is freely given, even when we struggle to give it to ourselves.
Love multiplies, even when our resources do not.

I know I’m not alone in this. Many people carry quiet wounds into the holiday season, and if that is you, I hope this reflection helps you feel seen.

🌿 A Word About My Father

I want to be clear about something:
Although I may never fully understand the circumstances or motivations behind what happened in that courtroom, I do not blame my father.

My understanding today is very different from the understanding I had as that little girl. There is still a part of me that feels compassion for both of my parents — because people are who they are for a reason, shaped by their own wounds, their own family stories, their own beliefs and limitations.

I have often wondered what circumstances, what pressures, what internal conflicts led them to act as they did — especially coming from a strong Catholic family. Perhaps understanding that context would give insight into why some religious communities focus on controlling women’s bodies instead of helping children with the love and tenderness Jesus taught.

But the deeper truth is this:

I am who I am today because of the life I lived —
and for that, I hold gratitude.

What happened was not easy.
It should never have happened.
But the compassion I carry today, the way my heart breaks open for children, the way I fight for the vulnerable, the way I see light in the darkest spaces — all of that was shaped by my lived experience.

I do not blame him.
I do not carry resentment.
I carry understanding, compassion, and a desire to be someone who helps where help is possible.

Understanding my father’s humanity has helped me heal my own, and it has taught me that compassion often begins where certainty ends.

🌿 Closing

As I stand where I am now — no longer the little girl who was hurt, but the woman who has healed — I hold both my past and my present with tenderness.

The little girl I was survived what could have broken her — and she grew into a woman who chooses compassion over bitterness, again and again.

So this Thanksgiving season, I hold gratitude not only for what is beautiful in my life now, but also for the little girl I once was …
and for the young mother who tried to protect her child in a world that failed her.

I hold space in prayer for every child — and every adult — who feels forgotten during this time of year.

May you know that your story matters.
May you be met with tenderness.
May you feel remembered, held, and loved.
And may grace rise within you like a quiet, steady light.

✨ Author’s Note

I am sharing this now because, for the first time, I feel as though I have come full circle in my healing.
The pain no longer defines me — it informs me.
The wound no longer harms me — it guides me.
And the little girl I once was has finally found peace, held by the woman I became.

If your story carries its own quiet sorrows, please know this: healing is possible, even when it feels distant. It arrives in layers, in grace, in unexpected openings of the heart. And you deserve every bit of that gentleness.

With compassion and healing light,

Rev. Sheri

Rev. Sheri is the founder of AngelMessenger.net, a heart-led online sanctuary devoted to compassion, spiritual connection, and advocacy for the vulnerable. Through her writings, resources, and charitable projects, she helps others remember their worth, their light, and the power of kindness to transform even the most painful stories.