How I Am Finding My Footing on This Christmas Eve

A Christmas Eve reminder that you are not walking this path alone.

There is a quiet that settles into Christmas Eve.
The kind of quiet that invites memory.
The kind that brings the empty chair into full view, no matter how warm the room feels or how many traditions we try to keep going.
The kind of quiet that reminds us that love and ache can sit right beside each other during the holidays.

And while I have found my glimmers this season cooking a few of my favorite dishes, lighting the candles that make my home feel steady, and curling up under a cozy blanket at the end of long days, the empty chair still rises to the forefront, teaching me again that you can prepare, still feel unprepared, and still find your footing.

As I hold all of that, I want to share a poem written more than one hundred years ago by a woman whose words still meet us where we are. Georgia Douglas Johnson, a Black woman poet of the early twentieth century, understood sorrow in intimate ways. She experienced widowhood, raised two sons alone, held a demanding day job, and wrote late into the night because it was the only time she had left for herself.

She knew what it meant to keep moving through a season when the heart felt stretched. She knew what it meant to trust God in the dark. She knew what it meant to walk through grief with quiet strength.

Her voice resonates deeply with The Mourning Manager community. She wrote for anyone trying to find their footing in the dark. She wrote for times like this.

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“The Path”

by Georgia Douglas Johnson (public domain)

I walk the path of sorrow,
Yet do not walk alone;
The prayers of loving people
Surround me as my own.

The way is rough and rugged,
The night is dark and long,
But on the distant hilltops
I hear a faint, sweet song.

And though the shadows gather,
And though the storms may roll,
I trust that God will lead me
And keep my fainting soul.

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When I read these lines on Christmas Eve, they land differently. They remind me that the empty chair does not mean I walk this time alone. They remind me that prayers, love, memory, and God’s nearness still surround me. They remind me that even when the hilltops feel far away, there is a faint song rising somewhere.

Wherever you are this Christmas Eve, whatever your heart is carrying, I hope this reflection and this poem offer a small moment of companionship. A breath. A reminder that your grief does not interrupt Christmas. It is simply part of how love continues.

Sending peace your way and a light for you path,
🖤 Carolyn’s daughter