The holiday season is sometimes joyful, sometimes stressful - and to be honest, it’s usually a mix of both. Between external pressures and family dynamics, we figure everyone can use some tips on making it through the season.
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This is it's okay that you're not okay, and I'm your host, Megan Divine. This week getting through the holidays. The end of your holidays are supposed to be a break for most people, a time to connect and relax, But judging by the questions and the comments I see on social media, the holidays are not that. Stay tuned to find out how to navigate awkward family conversations, manage competing needs, and help the people around you find even the tiniest amount of peace in the season. We'll be right back after this first break before we get started. Two quick notes. One, this episode is an OnCore performance. I am on break working on a giant new project, so we're releasing a mix of our favorite episodes from the first three seasons of the show. This episode is from season one, in which I answered listener questions, sometimes on my own, sometimes with a guest. So if you want more of these Q and A stylepisodes, you can find the entire collection from season one wherever you get your podcasts. Second note, while we cover a lot of emotional relational territory in our time here together, this show is not a substitute for skilled support with a license mental health provider or for professional supervision related to your work. I really want you to take what you learn here, take your thoughts and your reflections out into your own world, and talk about it all. Okay, so I'm not a holiday person. I'm about to do a holiday show for you, and I feel like I should make that disclaimer in the interest of transparency. I am not a holiday person. I'm not a grinch. I don't hate them. I don't have deep seated issues related to the holidays. Don't therapize me. Holidays are just kind of a non issue for me. If the whole world wasn't playing holiday music in every possible venue everywhere, I probably would not notice it's the holiday season at all. I don't even have seasonal cues. I live in southern California. Most of the time, I'm not even sure what month it is, so I am definitely not tracking with everybody else. I was a holiday person when I was a kid. My dad used to read Twas the Night Before Christmas to my brother and me. Every Christmas Eve. My parents played the classic oldies for Christmas music, being Crosby Sinatra, Nat King, Cole Perry Como, sometimes a little Elvis blue Christmas thing going on in there. I grew up in the seventies, so all the stuff that's fashionable in the high end vented shops right now, that is my childhood. So here's a Christmas story. There's a great vented shop in my neighborhood, and my dog and I go in there all the time. It's part of her training routine. Luna goes in so you can get treats and backscratches and ignore the neighborhood cat. The shops all decked out for the holidays in there, and there's this one little section with a table set like a home dining room, and it's covered with boxes of Christmas ornaments from the late seventies, some homemade looking santas, some of those old cardboard gift boxes. People of a certain age will know what I mean, or you shop in the vinted shops, maybe you know what I mean. They're like shirt boxes that are printed with a true mid century bow on them, so you don't actually have to wrap them. They're just kind of done for you. It's like the greatest hits of Christmas past in there. Have yourself a merry little Christmas started playing on the sound system and I lost it. I just got this massive wave of nostalgia and sadness standing there. Even if I don't like the holidays, the holidays are hard. Both my parents are alive. My dad was really, really sick earlier this year. Thankfully he's still around. He's doing fine. He's doing awesome, actually, But with the pandemic grinding on into year three and travels still wonky, I don't know, the passage of time is just hitting me hard. All that stuff and the vintage shops, somebody's family, kids grow up and get old, families change, what's new becomes boring and dated, and then vintage and stylish again if you wait long enough. The combination of all that old stuff on the table in front of me and Frank Sinatra singing what is Excuse Me? A very melancholy song, it all just hit me really hard. Life is short. This is the sort of stuff I think about all the time. I'm that person that always notices the melancholy bits around the edges. Blessing or a curse, not quite sure. I feel like, because we're doing a holiday show here, I want us all to start on the same footing that the holidays are not the fun fest the Hallmark Channel wants us to believe. I know that some of you really love the holidays, and I do not want to take that away from you in any way. I even have my moments of enjoying certain things, like a cup of hot chocolate on a snowy day with a small town Christmas parade or something. I am there for it. So I don't want us to think that I am a Grench. And I think we got a te the truth about how hard the holiday season is, even if you like it. The holidays are not all sunshine and snowmen. There's a lot of pressure involved internally Externally, family dynamics and expectations are a really big thing, and there's a whole lot of togetherness when maybe you don't want a whole lot of togetherness all the time. You're supposed to get together with relatives you don't see all that often, which means there is a lot of small talk involved in the holiday season, small talk that involves rather intrusive personal questioning. If you know what I mean. That's true when you don't want to talk about like everyday basic stuff in your life to your great aunt Tilda, who you only see once every three years. But you throw in any tender personal stuff like grief or work challenges or just like personal stuff you don't want to talk about with everybody, then things get really messy, really really quickly. And then, on top of all that, if you were in an industry where you've seen a lot of pain and suffering lately, turning that switch off when people want to keep asking you about how your job is and how it's going, that's a whole other layer of interpersonal difficulty. So I think it's okay if I want us all on the same page and just saying together that the holidays can be really, really hard. So what I want to do here together this week is do a little bit of a holiday survival guide for you. We are facing three more weeks, I think. See I told you I have no idea what time of year it is, but somewhere around three more weeks of potential holiday awkwardness. I want to run through a few things that might make this just a little bit easier for you and help you navigate these awkward interpersonal situations with a little bit more skill and potentially even a little bit more holiday chair. So here's how I think we're going to do it. I'm going to start with a question that one of you sent in for me, and I'm going to use that as a springboard to talk about a few different things. So here's the question. Surviving the holidays for me requires someone to mention my son, Matthew's name. He died on January twenty six, twenty seventeen, of an opiate overdose at twenty eight years old. I just spent Thanksgiving with my family and no one mentioned him. I don't get to set the tone or decide what we talk about because I go to my family's house for this holiday and I'm not in charge. How do I mention his name? Which is how I draw comfort without making other people uncomfortable? I love this question. I love this question because this idea that our main purpose in conversation or in relationship is to not make other people uncomfortable, and that we will sacrifice our own comfort. Literally, we will make ourselves uncomfortable rather than make anybody else feel the slightest bit of discomfort. So rule number one, you get to prioritize your own comfort, not just in the holiday season, but anytime now before y'all freak out and say that I'm condoning you being rude. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that if other people get uncomfortable when you ask for what you need, that is not your problem. As this listener also pointed out, they felt like they weren't in charge of the situation because they weren't on their own home turf. Right. Again, just because you're in somebody else's living room does not mean you have to be uncomfortable. That's a weird human tick I think we have that we're supposed to be polite at all times if we're in somebody else's living room. And again, I'm not going to say you should be rude, but that you don't have to suffer just because you're not at your home address. Here are some things you might do, though, to help make that whole thing a little bit smoother. I'm a giant fan of the preemptive conversation. Preemptive conversation would be something like this. So you know you're going to some family member or some friend's house for a holiday event, and you want your person or your situation that you're going going through in your life, you want them to know that you're okay to talk about it and that you actually would really love to talk about it in certain ways. So you can say something like you contact your friend or your cousin Marie and you say, so, I'm so happy to be coming to this holiday gathering with you. It feels really nice to be with the people I love. I want to let you know that I would love to bring a photograph of my son to put on the I don't know, the festive table or the mantlepiece above everybody's stockings. I would really love to feel like he's present in the room with all of us. I really miss him. So it's okay to tell people what you'd like to see happen when you arrive, so that you don't have to feel like you're scrambling in the moment. You can always ask for what you need ahead of time to make it a little bit easier for yourself, and that way you also find out things like if you go to your friend and you say, I want to bring a photograph of my son to put on the mantlepiece, or I would love to set a table for our dad since this is the first year without him, and they kind of freak out on you that's a really good information. That's information that says, maybe going to this holiday event is not something you want to do. You have the right to say no. I think remembering personal agency during the holiday season, with all of its pressures and awkwardness, knowing that you have the right to turn down invitations, even if other people are upset about it, that can be a little act of power and joy all in itself, right to know that you don't have to do things that you don't want to do. Now. Sometimes, of course, the emotional relational cost benefit analysis leans in the favor of sucking it up and going to do something that you don't really love, because not going is going to last a lot longer. But it's true though, right my whole team just cracked up when I said that. But there's a reality here that sometimes you do go do things things that you don't want to do, because if you don't go, you're gonna hear about it until next holiday season, and we don't want that for you either. What I really like here is arming yourself with knowledge and advocacy to be able to advocate for yourself in advance and gain some intel as to what it's going to be like in those situations, if you invite the wholeness of yourself into that space, I just like, I like, you don't know ahead of time how much of yourself you can bring, right, So going back to that first question with the parent who wrote in and said, how can I get people to mention my son's name? I think you can have a preemptive conversation with whoever the host is about here's what I'd like to see happen. You can also just bring it up. Something that happens, especially around loss or any of the sort of culturally, relationally taboo subjects of this is that nobody wants to quote unquote upset you on a festive occasion, so they don't bring it up because they don't know what to say. If you go first, it's like you give the entire party permission to say something that they know that you're okay with bringing up your son's name or whatever else you've been carrying to the party. Honestly, if you go first, they know that it's safe territory. Very often, what happens, too is that if you are brave enough to go first, there's a relief in other people because maybe they want to talk about the person who's missing as well, but they don't want to rock the boat. Remember that it's not just you who feels like you should be uncomfortable rather than make other people uncomfortable, that is a social thing that almost all of us do. So if you're brave enough to go first, you let other people know that it's okay to talk about this stuff, which sort of leads to the next question. How can I feel like my husband is still part of our lives and part of this holiday season when my family doesn't dare mention him Two years later, now they've moved on somewhat, but I want him to be acknowledged still. I just feel awkward for always bringing it up. It's a weird dynamic. So one a lot of this question we already covered. Families are weird, the holidays are weird, family dynamics never going to not be weird, and that awkwardness about bringing it up. Bring the awkward to the party. Friends be the one that goes first with the awkward party. But something I really want to pull out of this particular question is that line in the middle. Two years later, now they've all moved on somewhat, but I want them to be acknowledged in sort of popular culture. If somebody is air quotes here, still grieving two years after somebody died, they're kind of hanging on too long. They're not doing it right. Maybe they should talk to someone. Two years is nothing. Everybody. Grief lasts as long as love lasts. Grief is part of love. So this person who sent in their question saying two years later the rest of their family has moved on. Two years is a blink and an eternity. Time is elastic. So if you want to include a photo of your dead partner, dead parent, dead best friend in your holiday card, four years after, ten years after, fifteen years after, do it. Do whatever you need to do to represent that love that still exists, because it does still exist no matter what any external timeline says, and you can tell them I told you so. So let's talk about boundaries here for a second. Boundaries are important for everyone. When people ask intrusive personal questions that you don't want to answer, how are you supposed to get out of them gracefully? The answer to that question is by using boundaries. Boundaries are wonderful, wonderful things. So here's what I'm talking about in boundaries and conversations to get you out of situations that you don't really want to be in. So let's say that you're at this holiday party and your grandmother comes up and starts asking you about how work is because they really care. They really want to know what life is like for you. And you work a very very stressful job. Maybe you work in healthcare and it has been a lot for a few years, and you're just trying to celebrate and not think about it. But your grandmother really cares about you, and they're asking you a lot of really detailed questions about what work is like for you, and you don't want to keep answering, but you also don't want to be rude. So boundaries in conversation might say something like this, I'm so glad that you're interested in It means so much to me that you care enough to ask. I'm trying really hard not to think about work right now because it's been really stressful, so I'm not going to talk about that. How about you, what's been new in your life? Do you hear what we did there? You acknowledge the fact that somebody cared enough to show interest in your life because honestly, that's nice, and you stated what was true for you. This isn't something that I want to do, so I'm going to change the subject and talk about something else. Everybody likes to talk about themselves sometimes, I guess, depending on the conversation. But turning it back to the person who asked the very well intentioned but ill timed question, that's a really great way to deflect. You can also do that with stuff that when people are just being nosy little nellies and it's none of their business, like that relative that says when you're going to get married and have kids, people don't ever ask people that question. Just letting you know that is a thing that you should put on your do not ever ask anybody those kinds of questions list Anyway, when somebody asks you a really nosy question like that, you can say, that's not something that I discussed at this party. How about you? What's new in your life? Quick? Simple boundary redirection solves a lot of awkward problems. It's also connected to what I was talking about earlier, where it's okay to make somebody else on comfortable if it means that you feel like you took really good care of yourself in that situation. Okay, last thing I want to get into here, managing multiple needs. This is sort of a thread that's been running through a lot of what we talked about here today. Everybody has different needs in a situation, right, Like I want to be comfortable. I don't want to be uncomfortable. This person gets to have this kind of holiday, and this one gets like everybody needs something different and nobody is wrong. Managing competing needs is a really, really difficult thing. So I want to read question number three that somebody sent in. These are all really deathy questions. I want to just acknowledge that I see that too, and they're deathy questions one because that's what y'all sent me. Also, though they demonstrate really foundational holiday issues. I think a lot of holiday issues get magnified when there has been a death in the family or the friend community. So deathy questions this week, and they illustrate some really foundational points. You can use them if you're not grieving for a family member or friend. So here's the question. How can parents who have lost a child balance their lack of interest in celebrating the holidays with their other children's needs to celebrate, Like my surviving kid wants gifts and cookies and trees and holiday decorations and all of that stuff, and seeing these things makes me sick. But I worry my other kids will be angry if we just avoid the holidays altogether. So a pretty good synopsis of nobody's going to be happy in these situations. So again I go back to, like the preemptive conversation that we talked about a few minutes ago. You can sit down with everybody involved and open a conversation about what everybody needs. I think something that happens even without deaths in the mix, right is like, there's this pressure to make this holiday the best holiday ever. Every single year, there's pressure to make it the best holiday ever, especially if somebody's been going through a hard time, that people who love them want to make this as festive and joyous as possible to offset the trash that has come before. That's a lot of pressure, And I guess rule number one here is don't assume what other people need. Always ask them. It's actually something that I've been hearing some chatter about, like for people who work in healthcare and therapists and those sort of folks who, like everybody, sort of knows that it's a really stressful situation for those folks, so they're trying to make these great holidays like lots of parties, lots of food, lots of festivity. And you know, the therapists that I've been listening to are like, I just want a really peaceful, quiet, small thing like maybe a good hike in the woods. But that's it. If you're planning something really festive and enjoyable and your person wants something to be quiet, you're going to miss each other. So rule number one is never assume what other people need. You can make guesses, but just check them out right. Like you, you might ask your friends or ask your kids, what would feel like a really good holiday to you? What do you feel like this year? We don't have to do anything that we've done before. We ken if you want to, what would you like when we take that I don't know, exchange, interaction, conversation, and we set it into this question that involves death and grief and surviving children and a parent who doesn't want to have anything to do with the holiday season, but they don't want to wreck it for their kids. That's what I hear in this question. I don't want to wreck it for them. We don't have a whole lot of ahead of the holidays left right now, but you still have time to have these conversations. Open a conversation about what everybody is feeling like for the holiday. You can open it by saying like, this is our first holiday without your sister or without our dad. What are y'all feeling like? We can do a lot of different things this year, and I want to see what you might want to do now. Consensus, my friends, is a terrible way to make decisions. Do not look for everybody agreeing and making one holiday dinner that is acceptable to everybody, because it's never going to happen never, not even on the best of days. So consensus no collaborative effort. Yes, So doing this sort of pole taking conversation lets you know what everybody is thinking so that you don't make assumptions. But it also lets you stitch together traditions or holiday events that meet as many needs as possible. So maybe somebody wants to have a photograph of their person on the mantle. Maybe you want to forego gifts this year and do a bunch of donations in your person's name. I don't know what you're going to come up with. What's important is the conversation and allowing people to have opinions about it. Right, consensus impossible, Collaboration is cool. Nothing is required. Just because you've done things this one way for the last fifteen years does not mean you need to do them this year. Permission granted everybody to craft holidays of your own using and of your own liking, bringing in the opinions and the needs of other people. Yeah, just don't make assumptions, because assumptions are going to get messy and that's not fun. You can also allow for differences because oh boy, holidays families, there's gonna be a lot of differences you're not looking for, like angel singing right. Allow for difference. It is not an attack on you or anybody else. If somebody doesn't want to do what you want to do, I do just want to quickly mention that it's okay to allow for difference and differing needs. So one person wants to mention the person somebody else in the family doesn't want to. It's not a competition as like how many votes do we get for not mentioning it, and how many votes do we get from like, No, don't do that. It's not an attack on one way or another way. If people disagree and have different needs. It's just being human, right. Even your best plans are not going to be perfect because life isn't perfect. Just take good care of yourself this holiday season. Friends, we'll get through it. Stay tuned after the break for things you can do to start practicing all these new skills, and learn how you can submit your questions for me to answer next week. Don't miss that part. Friends. Each week I leave you with some questions to carry with you until we meet again. It's part of that whole. This stuff gets easier with practice, thing, and I want you to practice this week. A question and a homework assignment. First, the question what would a good holiday look like for you? Whether you want to include other people in that questioning process or not, I think this is a really good question. What do you most need in this season? There are no wrong answers to this question. Friends. You can have fun or parties or solitude, you can ignore it altogether. Everything is valid, but the question is really important. Part two, Practice us one scary thing, Tell someone one thing you'd like to do. This holiday season that might not be traditional or that might bring up some feelings. For example, you might say something like, this year has been really taxing. Would you consider having our main holiday meal catered so we can spend the whole day reading or playing together instead of cooking. That question is a pretty low sticks question, and I encourage you to start with something small like that. If this feels new to you, but try it out. You know how most people are going to scan through the show description here and think, I don't want to talk about that stuff. Here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here. We talk about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone, So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace, in your social world on social media, and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to the show, download episodes, and send in your questions. Want more here after. Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life is full of losses, from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to talk about that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic think positive workplace posters. That's an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every human trying to make their way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at megandivine dot Co. Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown. Co produced by Kimberly Cowan, Kanya Jujas, and Elizabeth Fozzio. Edited by Houston Tilley Studio, support by Chris Uran and music provided by Wave Crush.