Holidays in the pandemic are hard, because of isolation from loved ones, financial strain, anxiety about the present and uncertainty about the future. But for people living with angry and controlling family members, holidays are always like this. Here are accounts about Christmas pasts by five women who were trapped in domestic abuse.  Because they got out, in the holiday of 2020, they are experiencing joy and peace even in a pandemic.

Mary Lou Smith, 80, retired teacher from Scarborough

Buying a Christmas tree, we [Mary Lou and her four children] were always sitting on chairs, waiting.

“Can we go today?”

“Maybe.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

He would always wait until the last moment to say we could go.

In the end, I solved the issue of “are we going to get a tree this year” by getting an artificial tree.  

Jess Bowen, pediatric nurse from Union

It was stressful around any big event, I’m not sure why. He always seemed angrier around those times.

On holidays, the biggest thing was having to choose being with him or being with my family. [My boyfriend] didn’t want me around anybody and secluded me to just me and him, and one Christmas my dad refused to show up to my Nana’s because I was with my boyfriend.

Eve, Midcoast Maine

I always dreaded holidays because they involved so much more work and stress for me.  At Christmas, I was expected to singlehandedly do all the shopping and wrapping (while caring for little kids 24/7), make special foods, decorate, and write Christmas cards.  On top of that, my children’s father would deliberately sabotage my efforts.  

Whatever I spent on gifts was “way too much.”  One year, we had gone to the tree farm and chosen the perfect tree.  When I put it up he claimed it was too crooked, so he cut off all the branches on one side, ruining the tree.  Another time, some of the kids’ new gifts “accidentally” got shoved into the trash bag, never to be seen again.  

One Christmas, my kids’ father yelled at our little kids for playing with their new toys, and wanted everything boxed up and put away immediately.  He was so scary and angry, I packed up our kids and took them to a movie theater for the day.  I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.  It was a terrible, sad Christmas.  All that work, and no one could enjoy it.  

Now that I’m divorced, I still do all the work I used to do, but there is no black cloud of hostility and volatility contaminating and threatening our festivities anymore.  I love Christmas now.

Courtney Billings, 30, hairdresser in Rockland

I really loved the holidays. They were my favorite time of year. But he acted like a scrooge every Christmas. He would go on a tear about how stupid the holidays are: It’s stupid to look at lights, stupid to buy presents. 

It always ended up coming down to me not seeing my my family because if I did there would be a huge fight. 

Christmas Day was an excuse for him to drink so all day I would have to monitor his drinking really carefully.

The last years we were together, we wouldn’t have had a tree and his kids wouldn’t have had any presents if I hadn’t done all that myself. It was a a weird game of ‘I’m not going to buy them anything, you have to,’ and then when I bought them presents I would get in trouble for it. Total madness.

Any gifts he got me were totally random and I remember opening them and thinking, ‘Does this person even know who I am?’

For a few years after I was with him, at Christmas I didn’t even take my decorations out. 

This year is a little different because of the coronavirus but we are making cookies, watching Christmas movies, driving around and looking at the lights.

Man, life is so much better now in every way.

Melissa Ater, 33, Midcoast Maine

Although victims of DV endure some of the worst forms of scrutiny, violence and humiliation, there are also parts of the relationship that are happy, warm, and loving.

We still celebrated holidays, had birthday parties, laughed, and felt joy. But the joyful moments are so flooded by the bad that they become irrelevant. 

I still look back wondering how I managed to always convince myself that Christmas somehow had this magic power to change the way he was. 

The holidays are a time for joy and family; love and kindness. Surely he would not hold the same grudges and expectations as he did the rest of the year. Right?

My first Christmas married with my abusive ex-husband I was excited. We had a baby and all our kids were joining us that year. 

I somehow managed to get all the shopping done (that was my job).  We were doing well financially and we spent quite a bit of money on the kids so I was feeling proud and anxious while wrapping the 50-plus presents (again, all alone because that, too, was my job). He sat on the couch, as he usually did after work, sipping his drink and laughing at the TV show. 

I made the mistake of asking why he couldn’t get in the spirit of Christmas, and help me wrap the presents. Suddenly, anything and everything I was doing was pathetic and incorrect. It wasn’t long before I was the words starting with the letters A,B, and C.  I was shocked.... why was he so angry? I started crying and he grabbed me by the throat and threw me all over the room; strangling me until I practically passed out, pushing me down and spitting on me. 

Eventually he turned to the tree. Oh the Christmas tree, so beautifully decorated with tons of gifts wrapped neatly underneath.  It seemed like he had super strength. He threw the tree across the room and kicked every present until they were all scattered and torn apart.

 I was left crying in a room that looked like a tornado had touched down. It was midnight, on Christmas Eve. The kids were coming soon and the baby would be awake. Did he really just destroy our children’s Christmas? Of course I wouldn’t let that happen so I stayed up all night; rewrapping each gift, cleaning the room, redecorating the tree. While he slept I cleaned up the mess his control issues left behind; something I did very often the next three years of our life. 

 The holidays played out every year in similar fashion to the point that I stopped wrapping the gifts and I waited until practically morning before bringing them out. The Holidays were like the rest of our life; always finding ways to just get through without triggering any one of his hundred switches. 

My children never knew, coming home or waking up, that I had rewrapped their gifts three times or that the Christmas tree was upside down just hours before. They never knew what took place for me during the holidays, and when their faces lit up Christmas morning, nothing in the world could steal the joy I felt!

The holidays can be very difficult for survivors. They have a million different triggers to avoid, all while putting on the happy mask to the friends and family they don’t get to see. I look back at my life in violence and its clear to me now that my abuser had one goal: Destroying anything and everything that brought me happiness and joy. I’m just glad I never let him win! 

Merry Christmas to all the strong survivors doing what they have to in order to make the holidays perfect for their children!

Patrisha McLean is a photojournalist based in Camden and the founder and president of Finding Our Voices. For more information visit FindingOurVoices.net You can contact Patrisha at hello@findingourvoices.net