Navigating the Holidays When Life is Hard

Major life transitions are hard. Being alone for the holidays might be a new thing for you.  How do you get through this season of love and joy when you really just feel sad and angry? I've got 5 tips to get you through. It won't make everything magically better but focusing on these things will help reduce the aggravation and hopefully help you find a little peace in middle of the chaos.

Transcript:

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing.

This is a podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life.

And I use that word rebuild because we are specifically designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life.

A few things could lead you to that point.

For me, it was the end of a 20-year marriage for my sister.

It was the unexpected death of her spouse.

The common denominator tends to be when all your plans for the future have gone up in smoke.

The person you did life with is no longer there, and you kind of have to regroup.

Your day-to-day life looks totally different than it did before when you have to make new plans for the future and a new agenda and a new idea, and that can feel really overwhelming.

So if that is you, first, let me say, from the bottom of my heart, I'm truly sorry.

I know how horrible that feels.

But I also am here to tell you, there is so much hope.

It gets better.

I mean, way better if you are not alone.

You're actually in the right place.

So welcome.

I'm so glad you're here.

Now, let's get down to today's episode.

Today's episode doesn't fall neatly into one of the five categories.

In the beginning, I said, I focused on five areas when I rebuild my life.

I focused on my spiritual health, my mental health, my physical health, my financial health, and growth and goals.

So today's episode is a little different.

And today's episode is a little more timely.

It has to do with the season we're in.

And it's about getting through the holidays when you don't have that person anymore.

Whether it was death or divorce.

But now you're alone, and the holidays are on us.

It's November right now.

And it can be really difficult to navigate the holidays when you've been with somebody for so long, and now you're no longer with that person.

Everybody is joyous and happy and family and love around the holidays.

And it can be really easy to feel grumpy and angry and just want the holidays to be over.

I am somebody who absolutely loved Christmas.

Christmas is my absolute favorite holiday.

But those first couple of years after my divorce, it was really hard to like Christmas.

And I just kind of wanted to get through it and get on the other side.

With that, today's podcast is for you.

Let's talk about a few different tools we can use to navigate the season where it's all about love and joy when you're not really feeling that, okay?

So I have five tips, five things to think about.

As we're coming up on this holiday season, it's all about family and love and joy, and it can be a reminder sometimes of what we don't have.

So the first thing to getting through the holidays is accepting that things will be different.

And I know you know this, I knew this, like you know that they're going to be different, it's not going to be the same.

But knowing something and accepting something are two different things.

So when my kids were little, we lived in a two-story house.

There were stairs, their bedroom was upstairs, the tree was downstairs, and so it used to be that I would get up on Christmas morning and I would go downstairs and turn on the lights of the C