The festive season has been really hard this year.

In fact it’s sucked big ones.

I am usually the biggest kid on the street at Christmas time. I love everything about it: the lights, the food, the times spent celebrating with precious family and friends. Heck, I even bake gingerbread for neighbours and take the kids on long detours in the car to see as many decorated houses as possible. I revel in the excitement as Christmas Day draws near and get a total kick out of playing Santa. Really. I’m like the quintessential Christmas cliché!

This year, my spirits were tested in a pretty massive way, and while December 23rd saw me free from hospital and heading home in time for the Big Day, when the 25th rolled in, I just couldn’t muster the courage to face it. Instead, I barricaded myself up against the world and slept. The. Entire. Day.

Merry shitty Christmas to me!

Part of me feels unbelievably sad that all of this had to ruin an otherwise lovely time of year for me and my family, but I guess in the whole scheme of things, one shitty Christmas isn’t the end of the world. And the more I think about it, breast cancer has made me all the more aware and thankful for the people I have in my life, who love me.

Since the first day of my diagnosis, and through the horrendous days of scans and tests that followed, my family were rock solid. They did not leave my side for a minute. Had it not been under such crappy circumstances, it would have been my ideal lead up to Christmas – surrounded by all my favourite people in the world.

They held me, cried with me and did their best to distract me while we waited those long, slow days to find out whether the cancer had spread beyond my breast. And when the results were in, and my CT and Bone scans came back all clear, they even brought over champagne to toast my ‘lazy tumour’! I don’t think there has ever been such an inappropriate, yet perfectly fitting champagne toast in all my life! It felt like a small win, and we needed to chalk it up.

So, Christmas 2014 may not have been all I had hoped it would be, but my family and friends showed me so much more than a boozy lunch and too much ham ever could.