When The Holidays Don’t Look Like the Hallmark Movies
Hallmark holiday movies. Love ’em or hate ’em most of us don’t have families or stories that look like that and while I feel pretty sure we all KNOW that, sometimes we still live in la la land (and not the one with Ryan Gosling) and we think holidays will somehow look like a snow fallen walk on the Christmas Tree Farm with the suddenly single, massively good looking, flannel clad, gent. Just me? Truth is, our families and our lives don’t look like any of that crap. They are messy, and full of emotions and blended, and non traditional and alll of the things we don’t see reflected back to us. So, no surprise it can be hard to reconcile what life looks like on tv and what real life looks like. I’m talking this week about the realities of the holidays when your family looks a little less traditional, when the holidays come with co-parenting, blended families, adult children, grief and all the other things that we deal with outside of moving the damn Elf and keeping the magic alive. Join me this week for tips and honest talk about what you can do to manage your emotions and work towards acceptance during the holiday season.
Thank you!
I start off this episode with gratitude for all of the comments and emails form you all. I love our conversations about the topics from the show. Please continue to reach out!
Scheduling During the Holidays:
With each new year comes new schedules from everyone in your family which can make things more stressful or difficult to plan out the season. Just try to remember that it is ok if this year looks different than the past because of these conflicting schedules. I am going to share some tips on how to make some new traditions to include everyone.
Manage Your Emotions:
My first tip is managing and being aware of your emotions. “Don’t let your emotions control you, but stop and recognize that things might look different and things might not be the same. And it’s okay to feel sad about that. It’s okay to be like, I don’t, I don’t really feel super great heading into the holidays and Understand that there’s nothing wrong with that.”
Create Your Own Traditions:
I talk about how with being divorced and having to split holidays we had to get creative with our traditions. For example, with my kids we have Thanksgiving dinner on a different day so that we can all be together. Try to remove those expectations and do what works for your family.
MIA Family Member:
Sometimes our family can’t always be in person with us for the holidays. A FaceTime or a Zoom call can make all the difference to feel connected with your family. Even if it’s a group text, as long as your connecting and staying in touch you will feel better.
Holiday Meals:
Food is a big part of the holidays and there is a lot of expectations that come with that. My kids don’t love those traditional holiday foods so we found our own recipes that were similar to those traditional foods but had a spin on it that was geared more to what we enjoy.
Start A New Tradition:
Volunteering, crafts, turkey trot, new recipes are all great ways to feel connected with your family and they don’t have to happen on the holiday. If your family member can’t make it, send them the craft or recipe you are doing so they can be apart of it.
Conclusion – Give Yourself Grace:
“Allow yourself some grace, allow yourself some self love and the same understanding that you would actually extend to other people. You don’t need to wallow in it. You don’t need to sit around and be depressed for weeks on end and let it eat you up.” “Things are gonna look different every single year, what can you do turn it into something fun?”
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