T-day minus seven and counting… how you doing, single mom?

What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

Is this your first Thanksgiving as a single mother? Did you recently adopt, or do you have some brilliant bundle of choice bouncing in the bouncing chair as you pore over cookbooks and wonder what to make a week from today? Or are you a single mother through a different kind of choice, that leaves you wondering how to cope with the split holidays and the disappointed faces all around?

It’s ok. There are a few survival tips that can see you through, and into kinder, more wonderful places this holiday season.

Need some advice? You’ve come to the right place…

Holidays are hard on even the most perfect of families. If you’ve been to the movies recently, you might have seen the trailer for "Four Christmases" — and believe me, we’ve got it easier than Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon’s characters as they struggle to make it to all four of their dysfunctional parental homes for the holidays.

But the holidays are tough, and they are going to be harder this year, with the economy in the toilet. So here are a few pointers to get you through Thanksgiving and beyond:

• Go easy on yourself. Even if your childhood memories are filled with groaning sideboards, a ten course meal, and a house teeming with relatives, don’t force yourself to live up to those expectations if they aren’t what will make you truly happy and thankful. If your idea of a perfect Thanksgiving is dinner at a nice restaurant, or Cornish game hens on a bed of wild rice instead of a giant Butterball, the point is… you’re a grown up. These holidays are yours. Make your own traditions, build your own family, and enjoy the beauty of the life you have.
• Go home for the holidays, but don’t get sucked into old roles or stereotypes. Be especially observant if you come from a dysfunctional family. Nothing takes the wind out of someone sails than giving in or not playing along at all. If your big brother starts calling you chubby–even if you’re not–don’t take the bait. "OK, I’m chubby. Please pass the cranberries." If your parents start nagging you or putting you down in front of your child, you can have a private word with them. Tell them you love them, and you value their opinions, but that if they continue to belittle you in public, you’re sorry but you’ll have to take the children and go. Don’t engage in the battle. Simply leave.
• By the same token, if you go to someone else’s home for the holidays, be a gracious guest. Ask if there is anything you can bring, offer to help set up or clean up, and thank your host and hostess–yes, even and especially if they are your parents. You’re setting a good example for the younger members of the family, and good manners are good manners. Use them everywhere.
• If you don’t have the kids, don’t wallow. Take a mini vacation, volunteer at the shelter or the old folks’ home, or put together a Thanksgiving feast with other folks in your life who are good, and supportive, and kind. Relax, and trust that your children are having a good time, and probably love your ex, even if you can’t stand him. Don’t hover, even by phone. If you find these times of separation terribly painful, especially these first times you have to adjust to split custody and time sharing… let yourself mourn what you have lost, but don’t let it consume you.

I hope this will help you get through the holidays in style. What do you do to make everything more merry and bright? And those of you with blended families, how on earth do you make it all add up, with multiple custody and visitation, gaggles of grandparents, extended families right and left??

(photo by carbonNYC on Flickr)