Who\/ what is coming?\u00a0 The holidays!\u00a0 No matter your religion or ethnicity, there are holidays between now and the end of the year.\u00a0 In a perfect world, we would observe holidays with people who love us unconditionally- be they biological family or chosen family.<\/p>\n
Alas, we do not live in a perfect world.\u00a0 Families might be scattered across the country or the world, making it difficult to gather together.\u00a0 Families may not get along for any number of reasons, so they choose not to get together, or they do anyway and no one has a good time.\u00a0 Weather can cause last minute cancellations.<\/p>\n
So how do we navigate this crazy season with our mental health more or less intact?<\/p>\n
#1 Self Care.\u00a0 This looks different for everyone.\u00a0 It can mean anything from doing affirmations in the car to choosing to not attend a gathering altogether. If you don’t take care of yourself, who will?<\/p>\n
#2 Having Reasonable Expectations.\u00a0 If every year you walk into Christmas expecting perfect family harmony, perfect gifts, and only Instagram worthy photos you are going to be disappointed this year, just like every previous year.\u00a0 \u00a0Live in the moment and appreciate the good things that DO happen and the good memories you ARE making.<\/p>\n
#3 Embrace change and new traditions.\u00a0 Many of us have holiday traditions that go back generations.\u00a0 And if they still work, great.\u00a0 But know that it is OK if they don’t.\u00a0 This gives us opportunities to look for new ways to create meaningful connections with the family you have now and start new traditions.<\/p>\n
#4 Have a sense of humor. \u00a0 Things WILL go wrong.\u00a0 Food will get burnt.\u00a0 Someone will forget to bring something. Your head will be cut off\/ your eyes will be closed\/ you will me making a stupid face on every photo your sister posts on social media.\u00a0 None of these things are the end of the world.\u00a0 One my favorite Christmas memories as a kid is the year that my grandparents’ electricity went off, so at the last minute the gathering got moved from their house to my parents’ house.\u00a0 This was WELL before the advent of cell phones, so this was a lot harder to pull off!\u00a0 But we did it, and by the time dinner was on the table even my grandmother was laughing about the turn of events.<\/p>\n
With a little planning and the right mindset, we really CAN make this the most wonderful time of the year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who\/ what is coming?\u00a0 The holidays!\u00a0 No matter your religion or ethnicity, there are holidays between now and the end of the year.\u00a0 In a perfect world, we would observe holidays with people who love us unconditionally- be they biological family or chosen family. Alas, we do not live in a perfect world.\u00a0 Families might be scattered across the country… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[24,25,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice","category-bright-shiny-objects","category-its-all-love"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/dinnerscape-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}