Holiday’s can be the hardest time of the year.

The holidays can be the hardest time of the year for many people, and adding to that difficulty can be the over arching message that it should be a time filled with joy and peace. 

For many people, the holidays highlights the struggles they have in family relationships. It may be a family dynamic they struggle in, it may be a family member they don’t want to spend time with or a family that they feel baseline unsafe with. Often people feel that they can’t NOT attend, they can’t be rude. They can’t let people down. Often people spend the holiday’s overriding they unease. 

Or they don’t and that can be complex also. They may experience a grief around not having the family they want, or spending the holidays alone, or missing people who are no longer with us.

For others, the holidays marks in the calendar a time that they hoped they would have achieved certain milestones, which they may not have. A new job, a pregnancy, it can be fraught to be around all those you know and feel like you haven’t met what you wanted to meet. 

For others they may feel a pressure, either internal or external, or both to stretch themselves financially to meet expectations. This can lead to underlying stress that can bleed into the coming months of the new year. 

What I hope for all, is that we can move into an era of holding out boundaries and looking after ourselves through the holiday period. It’s OK to say ‘No’, it’s on to not go to an event, it’s OK to spend time with your chosen family over your biological family. It’s OK to make choices that make you feel safe. 

With that in mind, I hope we all have a holiday period that is peaceful for us, and that is joyful for us.