Give Yourself a Break
Welcome to week #3 of my series, A Yuletide Guide to Staying Safe and Sane.
Two weeks ago, I suggested four tips to help manage the current cornucopia of viruses. Last week, I focused on ways to manage our underlying health given the open spigot of flu, COVID, and chocolate cheesecake!
This week is the first in a series about holiday stress. Today is a brief personal essay with some tips and advice that I’m trying to heed myself!
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Every year I receive the same email from Shutterfly: “It’s time to order your holiday cards!” And every year when I read it, I cry a little inside.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the holidays in myriad ways. I love gingerbread, mistletoe, and family board games as much as the next person. I’d drink eggnog and watch Die Hard with my kids any day of the week. But there’s something about The Holiday Card Email that sets off the Internal Yuletide Dialogue (IYD). It takes me about 24 hours to reckon with IYD before I authentically feel merry and bright.
It’s a process.
Here’s what that process looks like for me — and perhaps for you, too, if you happen to be a free-thinking, joy-maximizing scrutinizer of cultural norms, especially ones that require hours of work and a boatload of stamps and red pens:
Upon opening The Holiday Card Email, I reflexively and rapidly move through all five of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief:
Denial
This can’t be real. Is it really December?? I literally just finished re-mailing a pile of last year’s holiday cards that I found stuck in the seat of the sofa.
Anger
Does Shutterfly have ANY IDEA how much labor is required, especially from women, to prepare for the holidays and to move through December with effortless grace and fur-trimmed loveliness? The patriarchy!
Why should I go through the performance of mailing a decently-lit, red-eye free family photo to my friend and neighbor who sees me nearly every day of the year including in my bathrobe taking out the trash? Oh, the theatrics of modern life!
Why do we punish ourselves by conforming to the “shoulds” of the holiday season, often at the expense of our own emotional health? There’s not enough Mulled Cider on the planet to lubricate this season!
Bargaining
Alright, deep breaths. I’m gonna treat myself to not doing a card this year. Yay! Decision made. Our friends and family know that we love them. Wait — what? That’s my husband sitting at the foot of our bed gently insisting that we do a family card for the 20th year in a row (“It’s such a fun tradition!”) He offers to do all the addressing and stamping and sorting, then he gleefully trots off, knowing full well how this sausage actually gets made. Sigh.
Depression
The stress over The Holiday Card is so depressing I just want to sleep. I wish I felt the intrinsic wonder of the season wafting through my body but the only thing wafting right now is the fake pine scent deodorizing my bathroom. Oh well.
Acceptance
I do love getting other people’s cards in the mail. Plus, other people tell me how much they enjoy receiving ours.
I also accept that my dear husband, a gifted father and disciple of the Shutterfly holiday card industrial complex, will no more procure the holiday card address list — nor will he have updated it to reflect relocations, deaths, and births since last year — than fly to the moon, but he has many other talents. I CAN DO THIS.
The holiday season is wonderful in so many ways. We bond as a family. We celebrate our many blessings. Plus, if I order now I get 50% off and a free mug.
What is my point?
You are not alone. The holidays are inherently stressful, even for the most jubilant among us. Society’s expectations — in addition to those we place on ourselves — can be enough to topple anyone’s toboggan.
Here are some tips to give yourself a break as we move through this month together:
Feel the feelings. Humans are capable of many emotions at once, and the holidays inevitably bring the goods. So pull out your journal or dictate into your phone the rainbow of emotions you’re experiencing this season. Once we put our feelings on paper — or at least somewhere outside our own head — they’re a little easier to catalog and cope with. (Why do you think I write this column?!)
Practice saying “no.” I’m not suggesting you should be mean, anti-social, or dismissive of kind invitations — hardly. I’ll simply remind you that “no” is a full sentence. Saying “no” also means saying “yes” to something else, and emotionally healthy people already respect boundaries. Sometimes a polite “no” is the best gift of all, i.e. permission to meet your own needs before accommodating everyone else’s. And if you’re on the receiving end of a “no,” consider that someone else may be seeking a bit of shelter from the onslaught of heightened cheer.
Move your body. Caring for our physical selves is an act of self-respect. Movement helps release pent-up energy and adrenaline. It calms the mind and resets the whole system. Make it a priority this season!
Lean into joy. This may sound frivolous, but it’s critical for health. If we focus too heavily on “just getting through” without sips of glee and pleasure, we deprive ourselves of important nourishment. Whether it's making the time to pursue a favorite hobby alone or sitting around a fire with friends and family, be sure to put fun for fun’s sake in red pen on the calendar.
Don’t assume Instagram or a professionally photographed holiday card is real life. After a couple of years of foiled traditions and often much less family time, suddenly the pressure is on to create the meticulously decorated, perfectly gifted, drama-free family holiday. If that’s not your life and your family, that’s okay. If you need to excuse yourself from an imperfect situation, look for ways to get into nature to recharge. Prepare an exit strategy before the pressures build — and remember, sometimes the people with the prettiest pictures and best social media feeds are having the hardest time in real life.
Give yourself a break. There’s no right or wrong way to handle holiday cards, office party attire, or grief at the holidays. We’re all in the same boat, doing the best we can. So give yourself some space to opt out, dress down, and fall apart when you need to. Give yourself and others grace for being human.
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Some of the people most in need of grace this time of year – and all year – are students and their teachers and their parents. The lasting impact of COVID closures has proven worse than any lump of coal in a stocking. This week on the pod!
Award-winning NPR education reporter Anya Kamenetz joins me to discuss the devastating effects of school closures during COVID on children’s learning, mental health and social-emotional well-being.
Anyway’s new book “The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, And Where We Go Now” brings the stories of these children and their families to the forefront while providing historical context on the broken state of the U.S. education system.
Anya offers advice to parents as they navigate the new “normal” while recognizing the diversity of pandemic experiences — even within the same household — and offers hope for the future of American families.
One last thing! Please take a moment to rate and review the show by clicking here and scrolling down to the review section.
Most of all, I hope you give today’s episode a listen now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you find podcasts!
I will see you next week. Until then, be well.