Holidays are dicey when you don’t have family in the area. They’re especially dicey after a divorce. When you don’t have family in the area AND you were particularly close with your ex’s family, with whom you’ve spent every major holiday for almost half your life?

Well, that turns the holidays into the emotional equivalent of a room carpeted with LEGOs that you have no choice but to cross with bare feet.

I have spent so much time crying about Thanksgiving. Missing the interactions I enjoy every year, the traditions, and the easy camaraderie of a family of people who’ve all known each other for ages. They’ve all cut me to pieces in different and painful ways. It’s important to grieve for these things because they are real and they mean something to me and now I have to let them go. It sucks.

I was fully prepared to wallow this Thanksgiving. My plan was to try to sleep through the whole damn thing. My ex will have the kids, because the kids have spent every major holiday with his family for their entire lives and it would be cruel to take that away from them. It never even occurred to me to have the kids for Thanksgiving, because what can I offer them? Nothing as fun as a day of the food they’ve grown up eating for this holiday and fun times running around with their cousins while their aunts and uncles and grandparents ask them how school is going. I figured I’d just stay in bed and see if I could induce a mild coma for the day.

My closest friends, who have become more or less my emotional watchdogs, deemed this an entirely depressing and unhealthy approach to the holiday and set about rectifying the situation with their trademark efficiency and kindness.

Instead of wallowing in sadness this Thanksgiving, I get to spend the day of with my best friend, Nicole, and her family. Nicole has carried me through this divorce with her tiny but very powerful hands, and she and her family are making me feel welcome and wanted and loved. I won’t be alone and probably hungry because I’m too depressed to feed myself. I’ll be laughing and holding babies and eating too much with people who watched me grow up.

And the day after Thanksgiving? My faithful and funny friends Jennifer and Aaron, both of whom have spent considerable time letting me cry while they patted my head and assured me my life wasn’t over, are hosting a Friendsgiving I can bring my kids to. Their kids and my kids have been friends since most of them were in diapers, so my kids will get to have a second Thanksgiving with their friends. Instead of feeling like I have nothing to offer my kids, I now have something awesome to offer them.

Suddenly, this bleak and lonesome holiday is full of people bending over backwards to make me feel loved and like I’m not alone. I never was unloved or alone, but that’s the peculiar and occasionally malicious magic of the holidays. They can screw with your head if you let them, and I did let them.

Thankfully, I have friends who are mighty and hardworking and have taken it upon themselves to make sure my life gets put back together in the most joyful way possible.

I still cry about Thanksgiving sometimes, but now it’s because I feel so humbled and taken care of. It’s an extraordinary thing to be loved precisely how you are amid the mess and pain of a divorce. You know who’s a lot of work to be friends with? People going through divorce.

This year, I’m thankful to be rich in my friendships. I get twice as many Thanksgivings now. How could I be anything but grateful? (And full {and a little fatter.})