Embracing an Authentic Christmess

Upcoming Self Discovery Sessions, and Ten Tips for a Happier Christmas

I’m Kate, a psychotherapist writing about mental health and self-discovery, for you to flourish in a life you love. When we cultivate self-compassion, resilience and understanding, we also create a more harmonious world. Upgrade here for transformative journaling prompts, empowering tools, workbooks, guided meditations, and if you would like to support my work. Thanks for being here!

Visit the index ‘library’ to find all past posts you’ve missed. Why not catch up over Christmas?

Hi friends,

How are you in the run up to Christmas? Before I dive into todays post, I have three activities to tell you about, coming up for my members over the Christmas period:

1. Reflective Journaling for Christmas, in case Christmas is difficult for you or you just need some time to get perspective before a chaotic day.

2. End of Year Reflective Journaling, to clear your psyche, to process and acknowledge what happened and didn’t, let go of what you don’t need, and hold tight to what you do need in 2025.

3. Thirdly, New Year Discovery Journaling to explore the possibilities ahead, and shape your intentions for 2025, therapeutically, authentically and gently.

I am making these journalling sessions a weekly regular in 2025 for paid members, since many of you said you find them useful, on various topics that often come up in therapy. What would you like to explore here? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll add it to my list. This is an opportunity for self-directed personal ‘therapy’, with questions a therapist may ask to dive deeper, and create shifts into becoming more… you. Is 2025 the year to bloom? You’ll be able to share and chat about whatever comes up with me and others in the comments.

Now, back to today. I write this as the winter sun beams in, warming my back. Pepper has found the sunny spot, living her best life perched on the arm of the sofa, distracting me with her cuteness (see photo below).

I sit at my table, littered with piles of wrapped and unwrapped presents, to do lists of bitty things, and my last jewellery orders stacked and ready to post, my final mail run of the year imminent.

My cold is gone, my daughter is home from Uni (with a different cold). My oven is broken and it’s too late to fix by Christmas, so my plans of cooking more to bring to my parents are in jeopardy. I forgot to buy an orange, a key ingredient for the stuffing this year. Will I have time for another grocery shop?

Clusters of dust taunt from the corners, the bedding needs changing and the car is covered in mud. Pepper needs a trip to the vet, and I have committed myself to making a complicated, time consuming gift for my mother‘s 80th just after Christmas, not to mention the cake. Will I have time to take my girl for lunch before leaving on Sunday? Will there be tears that we aren’t together at Christmas again?

You may not know that Lego now costs more than gold, so my nephews second-hand but super-awesome Harry Potter set sits unboxed and un-separated in a confused pile in the middle of our table. I hope all the pieces are there, like she said.

Low energy from long, long covid still lines everything I do, but the scary, invasive tests I had came back negative, so my mind is more at ease, though the knot in my stomach remains.

This is possibly the first Christmas in 20 years that hasn’t felt painful to me.

I’m not sure why I’ve made it over that threshold. Perhaps because my daughter has now reached 18, so there’s nothing I can do now to make her childhood Christmases better, or her childhood. I did my best. Perhaps it’s that my focus is now turning to my ageing parents, their difficulties now trumping my own. Perhaps it’s just that turning fifty this year has been a ‘no fucks given’ turning point for me in my life.

I want to tell you to relax. That we are simply tiny collections of molecules on a giant rock floating in space. So take it easy! Have no worries! Nothing matters! But I know that’s not helpful. Lego matters. Stuffing matters. Cake matters. It does and it doesn’t. I don’t know. You decide what matters to you, and lay it all out in a line of priority and work through it all that way. What do you think?

Overwhelming loss can loom, I know. Like mine. Friction in families, unruly children (they are supposed to be, you know). Yes, maybe your gifts suck, and your food, but you did your best. You showed up. For them, or for yourself, or both.

I’ll wish the dust piles a Merry Christmas and look forward to seeing them on the other side. My nephew will love the extra challenge of ordering the lego with me and his cousins before he begins making Dumbledores Office. The stuffing will still taste nice without the orange. No-one cares that I have mud on my car; they are too busy projecting their own insecurities to notice mine. If they don’t like the gifts, they can pass them on to someone who does. We won’t make it to a pre-Christmas lunch, as my girl has a bustling social calendar, and I can only be happy for that.

Read my pep talk here, for my daughter’s 18th you might also enjoy

Ten Tips to Enjoy an Authentic Christmas

1. Let’s check our assumptions and projections. Good enough is the only goal and the only reality. My sister was 8 3/4 months pregnant last Christmas, with a three year old in tow. She dished out a crisp £20 to each of the kids saying ‘sorry, this is your gift.’ They all ran around beaming, flapping their notes and holding them up to the light, discussing what they might buy. None of us felt any animosity, quite the opposite. Leave any judgy-judgesons to their own inner torment, if it’s there at all.

2. Let’s accept our feelings, whatever they are, and explore and challenge them if needed. Our minds are great story tellers but they do come up with some shit, and the feelings come to match. To get our needs met, we have to know what they are, by slowing down, or being present. Can you leave guilt somewhere else for a day? Give yourself a break and a healthy dose of compassion.

3. Let’s enjoy the mess. This is where life lives. Christmas is messy. Families are messy. Lives are messy. It’s so beautiful. The point is that we come together as we are, or nurture ourselves if we can’t. We all try, and that’s the gift. That’s our common ground. That our lives are messy and we are here regardless.

4. Let’s honour our missing loved ones. If somebody’s popping into your head all the time, or grief consumes you, make it and them part of your day. You can’t fight it. After losing two babies either side of my daughter many years ago, I will light a candle for Rosie and Holly this Christmas. They still occupy much of my heart, and are part of my day, even though they aren’t part of anyone else’s.

5. Let’s find joy in the little things, like loading the dishwasher with a cousin you haven’t seen for a year. Enjoy laughing together at lumpy gravy, or if the food is burnt dry. It’s been cooked with love and effort, and that’s the point.

6. Let’s shrink Stress Snowballs. If you can’t help stress snowballing, stop it in its tracks as soon as you notice. Snowballs on a hill gather pace and look for more snow. Your mind wants to justify the stress it’s made, and intensify it. WTF mind? Take a breath. Ask for help. Look at the sky. Be compassionate to yourself. Focus on priorities. If you’re gonna be late, you’ll be late, that’s okay. If you spiral into catastrophe, use the grounding techniques in the tools for calm section here through the day, and feel your feet on the ground.

7. Let’s manage our relationships. If there’s someone there who might try to hurt your feelings, create an imaginary barrier around yourself, a boundary so that no hurt can harm you. (I’ll write about boundaries in the new year). If you fear being questioned about shit things going on in your life, like unemployment, or your crappy relationship, or your invisible illness, or you’re financial worries, or your mental health. Just be honest. Chances are their lives have pretty shitty elements in them too, maybe worse than yours. Keep the dialogue going. Be brave.

   It’s also okay that we get on better with some people more than others. That’s life.

8. Let’s remember Elsa, and let it go. If you haven’t seen it, she was fine by the midpoint, and everyone loved her more by the end, for owning her shit and being authentic. It was a relief all round. You don’t have to pretend to be anything or anyone. Just be true and ignore the haters, that’s their process.

9. Let’s hide in pride if we need to. I’m an excellent hider, and from a young age I learned how to ask other people questions about themselves so to avoid any scrutiny, or even to be seen. I’m still excellent at this. It is a protective mechanism but it can needlessly push people away, so I’m working on that balance. If people don’t like me, that’s really their business. But I can still have privacy and that’s fine too.

   I know many of you are introverts, so feel free to locate the nearest cupboard, garden, lane, loo, and hide there, free from shame.

   ‘Where have you been?’

   ‘Oh I felt over stimulated and drained so I sat in the garden looking at the trees for an hour.’ Own it people, there is nothing wrong with us. And you give others permission to take time for themselves. It’s a lot. We may need to hide away completely, and be alone for longer. Self-support is sometimes the priority, particularly when life is too much, or too painful. It will ease. Do ask for support if this is you, or drop me a comment below.

10. Let’s banish perfectionism. It’s just a state of mind, that actually makes others feel worse, as well as yourself. It’s also a sure way to fail at life, and at Christmas as you’ll never, ever reach it. Because it is a fantasy. Do you know how long people on instagram take to get their homes looking like that? Get a life, people!

    Aim for soggy sprouts and burnt stuffing, badly wrapped presents, at least one broken glass and a spill on the floor. If you have children, at one of them is supposed to seem ungrateful or have a meltdown. It’s okay if somebody cries, or if your tree is not elegant. Mine this year is small and wonky, like my life.

This isn’t instagram, this is life.

• Christmas is just a day.

• A day about love and hope.

• A day to remember humanity. The nativity story is about that, a teeny baby with refugee parents in a stable. Low is high at Christmas.

• Let’s have a day to honour and cherish what we love and have in our lives, and be compassionate to ourselves and others as we all do our messy, inadequate and beautiful best.

I’ll be back soon with a review of my first year on Substack, and those self discovery reflection journalling sessions, for Christmas; End of year, and New Year, to explore what lies ahead. See you there?

How do you embrace Christmess?

Thanks for reading!

With love and gratitude,

Kate

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Pepper enjoying the winter sun today!🌞