When Family Isn't Safe: Navigating the Holidays and Finding Refuge in Your Body

The holidays can be both beautiful and brutal.

They come wrapped in expectations—gifted and re-gifted through generations. We enter homes filled with people who’ve known us since we were small, long before we knew how to protect ourselves, how to set boundaries, or how to stay connected to who we truly are. For some, this season is a time of warmth, laughter, and connection. But for others, it carries a much heavier weight.

The family dynamic, however loving, can overwhelm. It stirs up old stories, roles we’ve been assigned, and pressures that don’t always leave space for who we’ve become. We find ourselves pulled between who we once were and the person we’ve grown into, navigating an environment where the expectations of others often eclipse our own evolving truths.

For many, the holidays highlight not just the joy but the ache of being with family. Maybe it’s the gap between who you are now and how your family still sees you. Maybe it’s the tension between the values you’ve come to hold and the ones you grew up with. But for others, the holidays are a painful reminder of something deeper—of family as a place of harm rather than safety.

We rarely speak about the grief of those who don’t have a family to go to, or whose family is a source of deep pain. For some, family gatherings are a place where old wounds are reopened, where the abuse or neglect of the past is never far from the surface. I’ve sat with clients who dread the holidays, not because they don’t want to connect, but because family represents a place where they were deeply harmed. The very people who were supposed to protect them were the ones who caused them pain.

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