Whiskey Balls & Wounds You Didn’t Ask For

(A Christmas Eve-Eve Kitchen Confession)

By Mama Tiff

I’m in the kitchen today.
The day before Christmas Eve.

Cheese balls are done. Whiskey balls are next. Cranberry salsa is waiting its turn. And somewhere between beating cream cheese into submission and chopping cranberries like they owe me money, I started thinking.

There’s this quote. One of the most piercing things I’ve ever heard:

“There’s a moment in every woman’s awakening where she sees the full devastation of what could have been… if she had felt safe, held, and loved.”

Yeah. That part.

And baby, I’m living it right now.

Not thinking about it.
Not philosophizing it.
Living it.

I feel it in my gut.
My womb.
My timeline.

It’s not just sadness.
It’s devastation.

And somehow, at the same time, it’s sacred.

Because even when you finally see how much was taken, missed, withheld, distorted…
Life doesn’t stop.

The holidays come anyway.
Your kids come home anyway.
Your work still needs you anyway.
And for the love of God, you still have to brush your teeth.

So what do we do?

We don’t pretend it doesn’t hurt.
We don’t wrap it in tinsel or sugarcoat it with cinnamon.

But we also don’t let it drown us.

We stay in motion.

We make the whiskey balls.
We cry over the sink.
We wipe our hands and keep going.

And if we’re lucky, we find tiny sacred pockets in between the cooking and the errands and the ache, where we whisper to ourselves:

This pain is real.
But so is the healing.
So is the love that found me anyway.
So is this damn cranberry salsa I just nailed.

If you’re in it right now too, I see you.

Make the food.
Feel the ache.
Hold your own heart if no one else will.

And maybe put a little whiskey in your coffee while you’re at it.

I mean… ’tis the season.

Mama Tiff