Dec. 8 is “Thank a Friend Who Helped You Survive Your Divorce” Day

I have a tiny Christmas tree I set up every year in my apartment in Washington, D.C. It’s a simple one, with red velvet ribbons and translucent glass spheres that glow when I turn on the little white lights that adorn its branches. I top it with a beautiful vintage silver reindeer ornament I found in a Western Maryland thrift store years ago.

I can’t look at my tree without thinking of one of my closest friends, Beth. She knew me before I left my ex-husband. She was standing next to me watching the sun set outside our favorite dive bar in Frostburg, Md., when I first said those words out loud: “I think I want to get a divorce.” She held my hand when I pierced my belly button, a painful act of defiance I endured while deciding if I also had the courage to start over. And she brought me my Christmas tree, something she found at a yard sale, during one of the darkest times of my life: when I was waiting out a year of separation before my divorce was finalized in the State of Maryland.

It goes without saying: when you are going through a divorce, your friends save you, again and again. They take you out for cocktails. They listen to your dating horror stories. They reassure you that you…