If you’re walking around this time of year with a storm churning inside you, you’re not alone.

The Holiday Season is a tempest between two minds: Candy canes, bright paper packages tied up with string, and love, versus the horrors that live just outside our door that we allow inside via television news (or that we’re unfortunate to be in the middle of in real life).

The unspeakable traumas that some people live through is far more poignant during the holidays.

We can feel our heart strings being plucked not just with every disaster but also with every beauty, too.
It’s an odd dichotomy.

It takes a certain kind of bravery to celebrate the holidays.

We can’t protect everyone from the disasters that life rains down.

An umbrella doesn’t work.

Drama, like a soaking rain, finds its way into your pores.

If not to us, then to others.

And it can feel disrespectful to enjoy anything.

We know this.

We hurt for people whose lives aren’t as full of goodwill as ours.

Life happens.

Life unfolds.

Life continues.

Life ends.

I’m no psychologist, but I think it doesn’t do anyone any good if we all walk through our day with a heavy heart, feeling guilty for what we have, pushing away the life that we enjoy.

I struggled with this after my sister passed away, and especially during the years when she was sick.

I think we owe it to those who are no longer with us, or to those who have been trodden upon by life, to raise our heads and look life in the eye and say “Right now, I am alive and thankful for what I have.”

Because who knows what tomorrow brings.

If being with others right now is excruciating for you, you’re allowed to say so and deviate.

Spend time with people you care about.

Invite people into your home for festivities—or sit on the couch with a pizza and a favorite book.

If you have the money and time to travel, visit family—even if you just saw them.

Or don’t.

Now is not the time for counting grievances.

It’s a time to remember the frailty of being, and acknowledging the poignancy of the two storms waging in your head and heart.

Do whatever you can to make yourself feel whole (or whole adjacent) in a broken world.

What does this have to do with writing?

Everything, of course, because writers write about stormy battles of all sizes and complexities and finding the courage to take one more step toward a meaningful life.

Writers create characters who realize they have Agency and can move toward what is right for them.

Life is messy.

To those brave enough to celebrate, I wish you a bespoke Christmas—you know, one that’s created just for you by you.

Until next time,

~ Gail

(Tick tock)

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