Surviving My Worst Christmas Ever
Originally written December 2014 | Updated December 2025
If you’re feeling heartbroken this holiday season, I hope hearing about my worst Christmas (and New Year’s) offers you some support, hope, and a sense of lightness. You are not alone.
The Christmas Everything Fell Apart
Everyone has blue Christmases—that’s life. And in 2010, I didn’t know it would be my worst when it began. That’s not how these things announce themselves.
There was no dramatic collapse on December 25th, no single cinematic moment. Just a quiet unraveling that had started weeks earlier, after a devastating breakup and broken engagement.
I remember moving through that season in a strange fog. I was functioning. I showed up. I smiled when appropriate. But inside, something fundamental had collapsed.
And my body seemed to know it before my mind did. Sleep was fragmented, and my appetite disappeared. Time felt distorted, and days dragged painfully.
Grief does that. It uproots you.
But I wasn’t just grieving him.
I was grieving the loss of our relationship and all the hopes and dreams we had shared.
I was grieving the life I thought was ahead of me, and who I thought I was becoming.
The woman building a life with someone. The woman who had told herself that all the heartbreak before this had finally led somewhere solid.
The future I had already moved into—emotionally, mentally, spiritually—was suddenly gone. Not “on pause.” Not postponed. Gone.
On top of it all, I was also mourning the fact that I was just months away from turning thirty and my life looked nothing like I had hoped it would. I felt completely overwhelmed by the thought of starting my life all over again.
And since I’d been through a big breakup before, I knew I had a hard road ahead.
But first, I had to survive the holidays.
MOVING OUT | December 2010
Now I know not all breakups are created equal, so to be clear, the kind I'm describing here is the devastating, gut-wrenching kind—the type of heartache that the saddest of love songs are written about. Including the song that inspired this blog.
This afternoon, I was home preparing for Christmas. My little Charlie Brown tree was lit up, the holiday radio station was playing in the background, and I was wrapping up some gifts.
As I was humming along to Elvis’ rendition of “Blue Christmas,” something in the depth of his emotion suddenly reminded me that it was exactly four years to the day—the Sunday before Christmas—when I moved out after my broken engagement.
That last weekend before Christmas in 2010, while most people I knew were busy running around the city taking care of last-minute errands, I’d spent the weekend taking apart the home my ex-fiancé and I had so thoughtfully created over years.
I packed boxes, went through drawers and closets, untangling our lives room by room in tears.
It was an out-of-body experience, heartbreakingly awful. The kind of experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
At one point, I called my parents, hoping that hearing their voices might help me feel less alone. My dad answered cheerfully and asked how I was doing. His greeting stunned me.
“Um… I’m terrible, actually. I’m moving out this weekend. Did you forget?” The silence on the other end confirmed they had.
I was so hurt that I blurted out, “Why does no one get it? I feel like I’m going through a divorce.”
I could hear tears in his voice as we said goodbye, which only made me feel worse.
Looking back now, I understand that my parents—married for 51 years—simply couldn’t relate to my breakup. But at the time, it felt like proof of how alone I really was.
CHRISTMAS DAY, 2010
At my family Christmas, I put on a brave face and told myself I just had to get through the day without totally breaking down. I didn’t want to “ruin” Christmas for my family, and I especially didn’t want to break my parents’ hearts with my sadness.
There was no mention of my ex-fiancé, but the ghost of our relationship was everywhere.
There was a crushing moment when I realized the table had been set with one too many place settings. I quietly removed it, blinking back tears as a wave of grief washed over me.
Later that evening, in a moment of weakness, I made the classic mistake of texting my ex. In my loneliness, I had convinced myself it was a good idea to wish him and his family a merry Christmas.
The exchange was brief. Cold.
It made my heart heavier.
Several times throughout the night, I slipped into the bathroom to collect myself—taking deep breaths, staring into my teary eyes in the mirror, telling myself everything would be okay.
Christmas has a way of amplifying heartbreak.
NEW YEAR’S, 2011
As if getting through Christmas isn’t hard enough, the fact that it’s followed so closely by New Year’s feels cruel. A holiday that naturally stirs up reflection, melancholy, and painful regrets.
Breakups can make us do strange things. And the way I rang in 2011 proved I was struggling with my new reality of being suddenly single.
That night, I danced the night away in a little dive bar in Korea Town—on a third date—with a magician I’d met online.
Yes. A magician.
I had gotten right back out there and told myself I was ready to date just weeks after my engagement ended. It was far from healthy, but it was all I could do at the time to tolerate the loneliness.
Looking back now, I better understand what was happening. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my anxious attachment had been activated, and I was desperately trying to minimize my heartache by replacing my loss. (Even though my ex was a psychotherapist, I wouldn’t discover that I had an anxious attachment until years later. Crazy, I know.)
True healing would take me much longer, and far less distraction.
ROMANTIC GRIEF
Romantic grief is a peculiar kind of grief. It’s real, but often minimized. Something people expect you to get over quickly.
People mean well when they say things like:
At least you didn’t get married.
Everything happens for a reason.
You’ll meet someone someday.
What they don’t see is that heartbreak doesn’t just break your heart. It fractures your sense of continuity. Your identity. Your nervous system.
At times, I felt embarrassed by how broken I felt. Ashamed that I couldn’t pull myself out of it, even though I was doing a lot of the “right” things.
I stayed busy. I saw friends. I exercised. I journaled.
None of that seemed to help.
If anything, the harder I tried to force myself to move on, the more stuck I felt.
I didn’t know then that grief needs containment, not emotional bypassing.
Or that heartbreak activates the same stress responses as trauma.
Or that the body doesn’t care whether a loss is socially recognized, it responds to rupture all the same.
And I definitely didn’t know that forcing myself to “be strong” was working against me.
That Christmas, I wasn’t weak. I wasn’t dramatic. I wasn’t failing.
I was grieving. Alone, without the guidance and support I needed.
Why I’m Still Telling This Story in 2025
15 years later, I can see how much that Christmas changed the trajectory of my life.
It cracked me open. Slowly. Painfully. Without any guarantee of who I’d be on the other side.
I didn’t magically heal. I didn’t move on cleanly. But I did get curious—about romantic grief, about attachment, about why some endings devastate us.
And that curiosity became my calling.
It’s what led me to create the BetterBreakups Method™, a framework born not just of theory but of lived heartbreak, research, and years of sitting with people in the darkest, rawest moments of their lives.
Heartbreak doesn’t need to be erased to be healed.
It needs to be honored.
And sometimes, it shows up on a Christmas you never saw coming.
How Am I Doing Now?
In 2017, after I shared my backstory, Scott Simon asked me during an NPR interview, “So, how are you doing now?” I was struck by the genuine concern in his voice.
However, I now understand that, when you work this closely with heartbreak, people naturally want to know how your story ends. They want reassurance that there is, in fact, hope on the other side of profound romantic heartbreak.
After recovering from the fallout of my broken engagement in 2010, I dated—a lot. 88 first dates over five years to be exact (I had a spreadsheet and everything). Some dates were hopeful, some forgettable, some quietly healing in ways I couldn’t see at the time.
Then in 2015, I met an incredible man who showed me what real, healthy, secure love actually feels like. Today, we are best friends. Our relationship is secure, loving, and deeply supportive, and in 2024, we were married in beautiful Cartagena, Colombia.
Naturally, we have our challenges—because all relationships do—but they feel like the right kind. The kind you meet with honesty, respect, and compassion. There has always been a sense of flow between us that makes our love feel easy.
That said, I’m also wise enough now to know that I don’t know what the future holds. And I’m grateful that the unknown scares me less. I trust myself. I trust my resilience. I trust that whatever life (and love) brings, I will meet it with honesty, compassion, and resilience.
This is why I do the work I do.
My mission is to pay this forward, to help people move through heartbreak with grace and dignity, to honor their endings, and to support them in finding real, healthy, secure love after romantic loss.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Whether you’re hurting over your past or current relationship this holiday season, remember that you are not alone. Trust me, I’ve been there.
Here are a few related resources for you:
The Ultimate Holiday Breakup Survival Guide
For as joyful as the time of the year can be, it can also be equally painful for those whose hearts are aching. This ultimate guide will help ease holiday heartbreak.
Winter Blues Playlist (on Spotify)
My “Winter Blues” playlist was curated for anyone having a blue Christmas. It’s a mix of traditional breakup holiday songs, some obscure/indie tracks, and mellow renditions of holiday classics to match your blue mood.
Natalia Juarez, Relationship Coach & Founder of The Lovistics Institute
Natalia Juarez is a relationship coach specializing in grief-informed breakup recovery and dating strategy. After going through a broken engagement in 2010, she became obsessed with reimagining heartbreak as an opportunity for transformation. Today, she helps men and women through the entire spectrum of breakups or divorce—helping them recover from heartbreak, initiate a separation, win an ex back, and find new love.
She's been featured in publications worldwide, including Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, The Guardian, Vice Media, NPR, among major Canadian media.
If you’d like to discuss working together to heal your heart, let’s talk
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