Embracing the Holidays
Before I sat down to write this blog post, I tried to spend a while musing what to write about in my free time, as I usually do. But somehow, this month, it hasn’t felt like I’ve had lot of time. Between getting ready to make the 23-hour trip back to the US for Christmas, birthday parities, work parties, Christmas shopping trips and just getting daily tasks done, I was so busy I could hardly think about this blog post at all. In fact, the first time I thought about it was last night, when I was stressed and rushing into a taxi on my way from one thing to the next.
As I rushed into the taxi, worrying about what I would write this morning, a little voice stopped me and told me, “Breathe.” Breathe. Breathe and let go of your stress, and things will begin to come more naturally. Suddenly it seemed to me that the question was not so much what did I need to write, but what did I need to read. What did I need to tell myself? How could I help myself during this time of year, which is both so wonderful but also filled with a lot more stress than usual?
The immediate answer, of course, was slowing down, breathing. To stop trying to treat life like it was a thing to be gotten over with, but to try to really embrace each second. To try to let go of some of the tension and just be in the here and now.
Now my next step whenever I’m writing a blog post is always to meditate on it beforehand, and now that I knew that I was going to write about the holidays and the subsequent busyness, I got quiet to see what else I could understand about dealing with the stress.
Once I did this I began to feel something very painful at the back of my subconscious. The holidays are a complicated time – filled with lots of emotions, both positive and negative, and there definitely seemed to be some sadness that I needed to look at. Right now were are in the season of Sagittarius. As a Sagittarius sun sign myself, I can tell you one of the biggest gifts Sagittarius brings us is joy. They’re the ones whose enthusiasm you can just feel radiating off them. But they’re also probably one of the worst signs for dealing with feelings. They’d rather have things be light and happy and adventure and fun, and don’t necessarily want to walk through icky things like pain and loss.
Like Sagittarians, we might feel inclined to put on too bright of a face on things at this time of year. We may be feeling forced to be cheerful or bake Christmas cookies or hang decorations, or whatever else it is we do during the holidays, when we’re actually feeling not that happy inside. This time of year can be difficult for many people. Maybe you’re of them. This Christmas is my family’s first without our beloved Grandfather, who passed away four months ago, and I know that as much as I feel happy to be going home and spending Christmas with my family, my grandfather’s absence will be felt deeply by all of us. Many other people also feel loss very deeply at this time of year, whether that’s a loss of a person or sense of disconnection and aloneness.
The important this is to embrace these emotions. Take some time to acknowledge them, breathe through them, write them down or dance them out. When I decided to pause and listen within after two weeks of straight busyness, I found a feeling of sadness I had not been aware of. And in embracing that feeling of sadness, acknowledging it, I was able to let go of some of the tension surrounding it. This in turn helped me to relax around my to-do list, become more present and less frenetic and frazzled.
Embrace. Breathe. Light a candle. Feel all of your feelings – sadness as well as joy. One of the deepest meanings of this time of year is the rebirth of the sun – that it is during the longest night that the sun is reborn, and the days begin to lengthen again. The wise men themselves followed a great light through the dark night to reach Jesus. If we aren’t feeling 100% at this time of year – that’s ok, because that’s part of life too. And it’s once we are able to embrace the darkness around us – the sadness, the fear, the worry and negativity – that we find the light reborn within us.
