After divorce, the holidays can feel heavy. Five concrete moves: decorate your home to shift your mood, go to local events, volunteer, host a movie night, and create a personal ritual that's just yours. Keep it small and kind to yourself.
All right, you have made it through Thanksgiving, and what's around the corner? Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, winter solstice. And that's a new opportunity for new traditions, but also for maybe a little bit of angst, anxiety, melancholy amidst the celebrations. And when you're going through a divorce or after you've gone through a divorce, being around family can be a little bit overwhelming. And you may want to spend some time on your own so that you can regroup a little bit, or you may need to be present for your kids to help them through the season. That's why I love the idea of finding small joys to get you through the season, but also get you through that space between ending your marriage and feeling like you're in a good place to start your life over again. So I just want to offer some practical ideas that you can put in play during the season and beyond. The first one though is very season-related, and that is to make your home festive. If you're feeling down or if you feel like, "Oh, forget it, I don't even want to think about, you know, spending time on—" or "I just want Christmas and whatever the spirit is to be over," maybe something that you can do to get yourself in the spirit is to do some things that are going to bring joy to your home. Because when we change our environment, that helps to change our state. Just like when we're feeling down and we listen to music that, you know, puts a smile on our face, our home can do the same for us. Our home can either be a place of, like I said, melancholy, where, you know, everything is down and drab, Or you can change how you set up your home so that you can bring and you can invite joy into your life. Maybe you want to create your own garlands, maybe you want to make snowflakes with your children, maybe you want to play Christmas music. Whatever it is, bring, you know, maybe bring some joy into your home to help to change your state. Another thing is what's going on around your town. I know in our town we're gonna have there's going to be like a shopping day. We're going to have the lighting of lights in downtown. That's going to be the day after Thanksgiving. Then we're going to go into the whole lighting of the tree and the menorah and all of these things. So being able to be around other people who are celebrating the holidays, um, that might also make you feel more engaged with the season and with the joy of the season and you know, having a hot cocoa with watching the, the lights come on on the tree. Maybe that's a little way that you can bring a little bit of joy to your life in the season. So check out your, your community boards, your Facebook groups, see what's around that you can, that you can partake in. The third thing is that there is magic in giving back. When we feel like crap about what's going on in our lives, one of the best ways to get out of that and to gain some perspective is to offer to help somebody in need. One of the things we're going to be doing with the Rotary Club this year is we're going to be calling kids for, you know, making calls as if we were Santa or as if we were Santa's elves. And I did that a couple of years ago and it was such a fun thing to do, to hear the joy and the delight in the kids' voices when they they hear that one of Santa's elves is on the phone. But maybe you want to volunteer at a soup kitchen. Maybe you gotta, you know, you want to ring the bell for Salvation Army and ask people to donate a little bit of money so that that can bring joy to people in need. So a lot of different options, a lot of different things that you can do. So again, check your community boards, and your Facebook groups to see how can you participate. And maybe very simply you want to have your favorite holiday movie marathon. Yes, I'm one of those who believes that Die Hard is a Christmas movie and we watch it every single year. But I have other favorites. I'm sure you have other favorites. Anything that touches the Grinch, especially the original cartoon, there— a season doesn't go by when I don't watch it. So what are some movies that you've enjoyed that maybe there's an opportunity to bring some friends together, throw an ugly sweater party and, you know, watch Christmas movies or, you know, seasonal movies, whatever that looks like. You know, it's about finding those little moments of joy and those moments of laughter so that you can, even for just a moment, forget about all the muck that's going on in your life. And maybe it's about building your own rituals. Maybe there's— and probably, most likely, there's stuff that you've thought of that is not on this list. And pick and choose the things that are going to bring you the most joys. And again, they don't have to be huge things, they can be little things, but the point is to look for opportunities to bring that joy into your life, especially around this time of the year. And if you feel like you need a little bit of help on this journey and you are ready to rediscover your spark and reclaim your life, let's hop on a call. I'd love to see how I can help. I'll put the link below.
