When I finally asked for an antidepressant, my postpartum depression had woven so deeply into our days that those days disappeared; years later even photos can’t evoke memories of that time, and when I finally swallowed those little pills, three things happened quickly: I filed for divorce, I applied for a new job in a different state, and I decided we’d go all out celebrating Christmas.

One of my sons would turn one right before the holiday, the other would be two years old for a few more months. They were babies, really, sliding blocks and cars and dolls along the floor before perching on both of my hips when I walked them into day care each morning. They did not yet know of anticipation and hope, though they did know of a mother who could only sleep under the glow of the television and cried serving dinner in the small galley kitchen with room for only one high chair when we really needed two.

Circumstance was forcing us all to grow up faster than we were ready. Their dad would go seven months seeing his mistress instead of us. Each day, I put on a costume of dress pants and button down shirts to disappear into the career that paid the mortgage. Each night, I re-entered our home as a zombie, going through the motions and unable to vaporize into the air as I really wanted.

To say things were hard would be foolish. To tell you I have no idea how we survived still would not do it justice, and it’s probably impossible to convince you of such lows. We made it, or these words wouldn’t exist.

After all, I had these little pills. Once I got past the first night of vomit and diarrhea in my sleep (my brother, an angel, quick to text back: “This is normal. You have to get through it. Don’t let it stop you from taking it tomorrow. I promise it will pass” to a person who thought nothing would ever pass and yet believed him as this is the way of faith, believing impossible things into possibility) it was like a thick film was wiped from my eyes, and my emotions spilled out like a rainbow of glitter. I could feel again and because I could feel, I wanted to do things like file for divorce, find a bigger job, and properly engage in the holiday.

So I did. Christmas music played on repeat. Three stockings embroidered with three (not four, never four) names were ordered, three Santa visits checked off the list in one weekend, and we just made the Polar Express train because of a meeting that ran late. I shook the entire time the boys and I were at the tree lot. There, the two-year-old cupped his own hot chocolate as we picked out our tree while a movie ran through my head of what it was like the year before, my belly full of baby and their dad driving the car.

That first year alone, I dragged the tree towards the house and took photos of my children in matching snowmen shirts on the front steps, the tree left for a moment because my arms hurt. The boys offered uncertain smiles in the gray mist of winter, the baby propped up against the needles because he couldn’t stand by himself. That day, I wondered if the trembling that shook my entire body would ever pass.

It would. Just not yet.

Then, every movement was a prayer: when the boys were up all night, when I put the train table together wrong, when I poured flour out on the floor to form Santa’s footprints and the dogs followed behind me, eating the outlines. I cried out to God, over and over again, sometimes with my voice, sometimes with my tears, always willing myself to just keep moving, and always begging please don’t let me stop, or please just make it all stop: I could never decide which.

That season, preparing for Jesus’s birth, we moved through tree displays, Christmas markets, half a dozen Santa laps, taking my toddler out of daycare for an IMAX showing of the Polar Express, cookie baking, ornament painting—we did all the holiday things. I bought presents and helped write a letter to Santa. I turned on movies from my childhood (“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman”) and took the boys to visit my sister who had tickets for breakfast with Santa, where there were reindeer in a paddock for us to wave to.

I also stopped responding to all of my husband’s texts: the apologetic ones, the angry ones, the ones where he told me he still loved me. My attorney told me to act like the good businesswoman I was, and so I did. My husband had no room for me anymore, so I made my own space and quietly filled it up with memories he would never have: gathering holiday books to wrap for Advent gifts, buying the boys matching pajamas, carefully spending my budget on discounted trains, on sale art supplies and wooden fruit.

These offerings, I alone brought to my children on Christmas morning that year, after a visit to urgent care and a delayed trip to my parents. My lungs filled with the start of pneumonia and kept us home on our own. By the time I read them the story of Jesus’ birth, carrying on the tradition handed down from my grandmother, we had a small list of things we now did at Christmas, documented by photos we would add to each year. I kept the panic out of our little nest, even bringing their father on the phone so he could watch them unwrap their presents from me, and Santa.

By the time my oldest son turned three, he was pretending to be Santa; by the time he was four I had to limit Christmas movies to October - February; by age five, he started to write letters nearly every day as soon as the air cooled; and at age six, he asked for a trip to North Pole, Alaska, so he could see the “real” Santa. He also asked for help for his mom in whispers to Santa, which I wouldn’t realize until about visit 6 out of 13, when the kind man with the white beard took me aside, his voice shaking, to say, “How are you doing, young lady? You have a very special young man there. Your son’s Christmas wish is to make your life easier; he wants you to have more help.”

Anyone who knows me knows about my son’s Santa obsession, and some people ask why. At first, I shrugged my shoulders: “It’s just his thing. I don’t really understand it either.” But after that visit where Santa told me what had been whispered in his ear, I started to wonder, I started to look through our old photos, I started to see how I was born again at Christmas. Things began to make more sense.

Envision a little boy equating Christmas and Santa with holding onto his mom, with when she started to become big instead of working so hard to be small. See the magical holiday season as a different present from God than maybe the rest of the world has eyes for. Realize it as a time when I decided to live instead of waiting to see if I would die, when God and I met together on my own wish that it all stop and the gift I was given to finally allow me to move forward.

Donning a red hat with a little white ball on it all year round seems like a pretty good idea, then, doesn’t it? When you are forced to grow up faster than you are ready for, when you realize that Christmas isn’t just a time when Jesus was born, it’s when your family was too, you might do all sorts of things to make sure what almost wasn’t won’t happen again. Including keeping Santa in our lives year round.

This year my oldest son is seven, and he’s surrounded by non-believers. “Mom, someone at school told me Santa isn’t real and that their parents eat the cookies left out on Christmas night. Is that true? Are you Santa?” he asks me routinely.

“Mi,” I always say, “do you believe in magic?”

“Mom. YES!”

“Me too. I think Santa is pretty wonderful. I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to believe in magic.”

“Me neither,” he says. “And you know, Santa has helpers all over the world. He can’t be everywhere for everyone, so maybe some people’s parents just help him out.”

I nod. Magic, it comes in so many forms: flour footprints on Christmas Eve, children dressing up as Santa and hollering “Ho, ho, ho!,” little pills that give you back your life.

Guest essay written by Lacey Schmidt. “My mom does everything,” is how her then three-year-old once described Lacey. Most days, it feels true. Solo parent to Miles and Jack, Lacey is an HR leader by career, Mom always, and all else in the cracks she can find.

Photo by N’tima Preusser.