Things You Don't Have To Do: Holiday Edition

Your hall pass to let it all go.

HI

It’s Christmas and Hanukkah Eve, and just a few days past winter solstice. I wanted to send a quick note of steadying and ease (and welcome, if you’re just joining our community!), for all the ways this time of year can do a number on our tender hearts.

The sun rises late and sets early, and I’m relishing the cozy dark. I’m also on deadline with a client’s book, navigating some health challenges, and feeling a bit more cocooned than usual. And you? How are you holding up?

Last year, I jotted down a few notes of resistance about some of the things expected—and sometimes demanded—of us (especially women) during the madness of the holidays. Revisiting it last week, the reminders felt as potent as ever.

In case you, too, are in need of a hall pass to let it all go during this week and beyond, here it is.

Things You Don’t Have to Do

Go to parties. Dress up. Spend money on meaningless gifts.

Pretend to be ok when you’re not.

Respond to people’s questions or observations about your relationship status, your appearance, your body, whether or not you have kids, what you accomplished this year.

Defend your sociopolitical opinions.

Explain your life choices.

Gauge success by how busy you are, how many gifts you get, or how many parties you’re invited to.

Know how to holiday after a loved one dies, during a breakup, when you're ill, or while you’re in a period of grief and loss.

Get a head start on your goals for next year.

Make NYE a big deal.

New year, new you.

The holidays. 💋

I hope the days ahead treat you gently. I hope you get to make the holidays exactly what you’d like them to be, or not be. I hope your heart is held, first by a gentleness in your own mind.

And in case you need some extra watching, listening, or reading this week, I bring you my recent faves.

SOME HOT LINKS

To watch.

I gulped down the new Duplass brothers’ show “Penelope” nearly whole—about a sixteen year-old girl who leaves her family to live in the wilderness of Cascade National Park—and have been pondering it ever since. Watch, and let me know what you think?

I’m looking forward to starting the new adaptation of Gabriel García Márquez’s “100 Years of Solitude,” too.

To listen.

This episode of “This American Life,” largely narrated by 8 year-old Banias in Gaza, is excellent.

To read.

Yes, you should read Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Megan Twohey’s exposé of the Blake Lively / Justin Baldoni scandal—but not for celebrity drama. Instead, read with an eye to the ways the general public is being widely and ubiquitously manipulated by “untraceable” PR tactics in the media. Yes, this applies to politics and every other area of media. And before you say “well duh, just look at the past however many elections,” go back to that part about this type of influence being “untraceable”. I’m curious about what we don’t yet know.

Finally, if grief or loss are companions for you right now, find resources and support here.

STAY SANE

Thanks for being here with me, for making this space a community. You’re pretty spectacular.

Love,

Lily