Holiday re-membering
Holidays can be brutal. Apologies if you spent the week beautifying your home in preparation for November’s feast (I’m sure it’s lovely). For myself, a highly sensitive soul, holidays stir up all sorts of emotional chaos. Memories barricaded deep in my brain visit with high resolution clarity.
Yearly traditions are catalysts for remembering smells, tastes, places and people. There’s no escaping losses, regardless of how much “healing time” has passed, who fills the chair, passes the gravy, or carves the dead bird (again sorry). Who can help but feel untethered, tattered, and frayed? These missing garments provided the double helix threads that wove the fabric of our hearts.
This time of year is tough. In the past, when I succumbed to cold-weather slothfulness, I felt piled with burdened blankets, which became a cocooned protective barrier; an innocent recluse that kept me in, and the world out. I’ve since learned to lean on movement practices for self-regulation. Movement seems to restore uprightness, release clenching, and integrate wholeheartedness.
I’ve also learned that booze nudges me toward seasonal affective disorder. Another apology for those of you scrolling to unsubscribe. No judgment; I like my vino, and Barr Hill Gin occasionally too. However, when I use alcohol to anesthetize, I incur a dopamine-tax debt, and optimism deficit.
According to news and analysis for the beverage industry, the average American sees a 100% increase in their alcoholic drinking habits between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Under the advertising guise of celebrating, it’s the sparkly, bubbly, social-lubricant everybody needs!
Surprised? We shouldn’t be; holidays bring up a lot of feelings.
Feelings suck, are difficult to sit with, and tend to get stuck where your heart ends and your stomach begins, the same place alcohol warms and soothes.
Shoving feelings under a five o’clock cocktail blanket feels so much better.
Until it doesn’t.
Again, no judgment; I prefer going undercover too!
I’m boycotting the whole adult/kid table thing. In years past, I’ve been the maker, baker, and hostess with the mostess. This year I decided to cultivate a different experience. Yes, we’re allowed to do that. Even if your sister (inlaw) doesn’t offer to host Thanksgiving. Maybe this is where you unsubscribe...again it’s okay, you get to choose what you subscribe to.
Regardless of how, where, and with whom you eat, drink, and celebrate the season, I join you in honoring the beautiful souls no longer with us, the cultivation of new traditions, and the nurturing of yourSELF. Restore and integrate that little girl (now at the adult table), and RE-member, you get to decide how to be of the world.
