In this solo episode of the Overgivers Anonymous podcast, host Angela Mondor (the Geeky Girl) shares personal stories about her evolving holiday family traditions—from a small, two‑person Christmas to a sprawling gathering of 35 relatives—and uses those anecdotes to illustrate the challenges over‑giving entrepreneurs face during the season. She explains how holiday obligations can feel overwhelming, especially when expectations clash with personal well‑being, and she offers a step‑by‑step framework for navigating the period. Key recommendations include: (1) reflecting on which traditions energize versus drain you; (2) journaling or discussing feelings to surface hidden stressors; (3) honoring neurodivergent needs and listening to internal signals to know when to step away; (4) setting clear boundaries and learning to say no to commitments that don’t serve you; (5) carving out intentional self‑care activities—hobbies, baths, hikes, reading—to recharge; (6) balancing year‑end business wrap‑up with holiday duties; and (7) leveraging community support through show notes and the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group. Throughout, Angela’s tone is conversational, empathetic, and encouraging, aiming to help listeners craft a holiday experience that feels sustainable, joyful, and aligned with their personal and entrepreneurial goals.
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Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we're going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving. Hi and welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, I'm also known as the Geeky Girl. Today I want to talk about something, something that's really important to me. Let's first start there. It's important, and it's important to me. It might be important to you. The holidays are coming, let's be honest. And there's a cornucopia of holidays this month, this being December, right? So this is, this is coming out in December. And I'm thinking ahead to the way that holidays go down. So some people love the holidays, everything about the holidays. They want to include everything about the holidays. They're super excited about the holidays. And then there's the others. And I'm kind of fall— I kind of fall into that other side a little bit. It's not that I don't love gift giving and being part of family and that kind of thing, but it can be overwhelming. And there's some expectations that sometimes don't work well. So I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about family traditions. I wanna talk about you as an entrepreneur and how you are going to use this to understand yourself better, to learn more about you, and to figure out how you can recharge this holiday season. 'Cause there's some benefits here during the holiday season. There are, Other times when we aren't going to be working as hard as we do in other times of the year. Sometimes maybe you've taken some time off. So let's talk about that a little bit. How do we balance the traditional holidays, the holidays that we have as family members? Maybe they're old family history sorts of things. Maybe it's new family traditions. I don't know, whatever's working for you right now. But I want to balance that with your personal well-being. There's lots of family things that go on, and when you become involved in another family, that adds to it because now you have your family traditions, you have their family traditions. How do you manage those? You have children, so you have your own family traditions. It gets to be a bit jumbled. Let's be honest here, it can get pretty jumbled depending on where you are. So we've done different things throughout the years. There have been different traditions. My husband's family gets together on Christmas Day. Usually somewhere around noon, 11 o'clock, something. And this mass of people all get together. I'm not even kidding. There's like 35 of us or something. And of course it keeps growing because children are having children. And I mean, obviously not children having children, but our nieces and nephews are old enough now to be married and have children. So that's expanding. There's not as many elders as there are. Of course, some of them passed away, but there's still this massive amount of people that get together every year. And there's Struggles and drama and figuring out how to make things happen. That's one side of what happens. When I grew up, I was an only child. We didn't have this massive family gathering ever. Our families, it was pretty small. It was my mom and myself generally on Christmas Day. My dad and I would celebrate at a different time. And so we would just be our little 2 people. However, we would maybe go to my aunt's place and spend the week there, maybe a week before, a week after, something like that. And, but still we were only 2 families. I mean, there was a maximum amount of like, I don't know, 5 people, 8 people. Like, it was just small, right? So going from that, and of course Robert, my husband, and I, we have been married for like over 30 years now, so this isn't new to how things work anymore in our lives. But when we— when it first happened, it was overwhelming. There was a whole bunch of things and things changed. So if you're in that situation now where things are changing, take a deep breath, really. There's a way through it all. So over the years we've done things. There's been some years where we haven't participated in the family. In fact, one year our family, our little nuclear family, decided that going skiing on Christmas Day would be fun. And so we went to a little town just in northern the United States, just below, in south, you know, south of where we live. And that brought its own challenges and fun because we didn't realize that literally the entire town and hotel closed down on Christmas Day there, 'cause it's not a big town. So we were cooking turkey in our hotel room. We had to go and buy one of those countertop ovens. So we were cooking turkey in our hotel room. I was— we had a blast. We had an absolute blast. So there are things that you can do inside your family unit as well as with the families that you're a part of and figuring out what kind of balance you want for your family, what works best for you. Okay. So thinking about your experiences, and sometimes it's hard to remember from year to year because If you're like me, you like to put things in a box and just sort of set them aside and go, okay, I'll deal with that again next year when it happens. But it is important to really think through these things so that we can make things better for ourselves and for our own brains, right? So you probably have some traditions that you love. There are some things about the holiday season that you look forward to, that you enjoy, and then there are the other ones that maybe drain you a little bit, or maybe they cause you to feel like it's an obligation and maybe you're exhausted with them. So I think it's really important to identify what the difference is and allow yourself to prepare if you choose, 'cause it's always a choice. If you choose to participate in the things that are going to drag you down and make you exhausted and feel you like you are obligated to do those things, that's cool. I do it all the time. But it's about how do you prepare for that and how do you look after yourself after? Okay. There are Lots of reasons why the large family is difficult for me, just all the people and all the expectations and all those kinds of things. But I honestly do like the people. I, I do like my husband's family. It's not that I don't like them. So I do focus on the people when I'm thinking about going there, as opposed to thinking about, you know, the, the dynamics and how many people we're sticking into such a small space and whether or not somebody's going to, you know, do the right things and I have to let go a lot to go into that situation. But because I've spent some time thinking about it, I can prepare and I can look after my own self, my own, my own health, my own wellbeing through this. And we don't stay super long. We stay and I feel, I feel like we get enough of, you know, everything together. We're, we're present and participating, but we're very close to one of the first families to say, okay, it's time for us to go. And that's for a lot of different reasons. There's there's a few of us in our nuclear family who can only do this for so long. One of my daughters actually, when she was little, she would literally walk up to us and go, home. She would tap you and just go, home. And we used to get some flack for that as parents. They would say, oh, you shouldn't be kowtowing to your child. You should be, you know, not allowing them to dictate what you do. And I thought at the time, of course I didn't know a lot about neurodivergence and that kind of thing at the time, but at the time I thought, why would I put my child through this? I know that, I know that we're, we're only gonna escalate, that things are just gonna go really bad, really fast at this moment. So why put my child and everybody else through that? Because it's going to explode. Later on, now that I understand the neurodiversity, neurodivergence and all of the different things, I really think that's a, one of the best things I could have done for my daughter was to say, you know what? I honor your feelings. I understand how you feel. I appreciate that you're letting me know, and let's get outta here. So if you're feeling that for yourself, Maybe it's time to honor yourself, to look after yourself and say, you know what, I understand, it's okay, it's really important. The mask needs to come off. It's time for me to go home. Look after yourself through this holiday season. And if you're not sure what you like or what you don't like about the holiday season, you just know that something's off, pay attention this year. Write things down, whether it's journaling or, you know, if you need to just kind of work it out with maybe your spouse or a friend, think about what it is that is happening this year and what is it that's Working against you? What do you really enjoy? Okay, so reviewing these traditions are important. Some traditions, and it doesn't have to be necessarily about people, there are some traditions in some families that maybe make you feel uncomfortable in, in, in and around the way gift giving is done. So think about all of those pieces of the holidays for yourself, what works for you, what doesn't, and really start to think about how you can craft your own holiday to make your time through the holiday season as amazing as possible. And I encourage you to make some space for yourself this holiday time. So yes, I talked about reflecting and journaling, and that's a really great way to do it, but maybe there's something that you can indulge in, in your favorite task. I don't want to call it a task, even though sometimes our brains think of it that way, but your favorite activity or your hobby. Maybe you like to hike, or maybe you like to have a warm bubble bath. Maybe you want to Have, you know, X amount of hours to sit and just read yourself, whatever it is that, you know, will help to rejuvenate you, to light you back up. Think about how you can work that into your world. I know I recently talked to my husband. We were talking about people and younger children. Of course, my children are all adults now, but when I, when the kids were younger, the best thing that could have ever happened to me is either if somebody said, hey, I got your kids, you go do something else, like disappear, leave the house, go do something else, or I'm taking your kids, you You stay here and enjoy yourself. To me, that was a huge gift. I was the primary caregiver. I'm a stay-at-home mom. I was all day, all the time on the clock. And so for some, anytime that that happened, it was a really big, amazing energy boost for me. So think about your life and the different pieces you have. Maybe you even have some elder parents that you're looking after. How can you find some time for you? How can you find something to— Really fuel yourself to get through some of these holiday things that are going on. And then put some boundaries around your holiday commitments. Maybe you feel guilty because you're not going to every single friend holiday that is offered. And maybe you don't need to, you don't need to, maybe you can choose not to go to each and every single one of those. That's up to you as well. But when you think about all of those different responsibilities or those tasks or those things that you have to do, really look at which commitments are going to fill you up, which commitments are gonna drain you, and which commitments can you say thanks but no thanks to. Now that comes with understanding yourself. If you're just new to this journey, it may take you some time to get through these things, but pay attention as you're moving through and really, you know, reflect on why it is that that thing, whatever it is, maybe you're getting together with a friend and you love your friend, but you just hate getting together with them. And it's because they always drag you to the noisiest restaurant. Well, maybe you just need to find a different restaurant, find a restaurant that's a little calmer, that's not as loud, you can actually hear each other talk. There's a lot of different reasons why a situation could be upsetting for you or cause you some stress. So reflect on those things and think about them and choose to put some boundaries up around yourself, not to hold people away, but simply to hold your own space and to honor what you need as a human being. It is hard at this time of year. There is so much going on. Not only are you wrapping up your business for the year, and of course, course, working towards what you're doing next year. There's a lot on your plate. And on top of that, you also have all these holiday— there's commitments, there's family, all those kinds of things. So I encourage you to really spend some time to think about what's going to benefit you. How are you going to stay whole and happy and find some joy in this holiday season? Align with things that empower you, prioritize yourself, find some time to eke out just for you. Or you and your favorite person, if that's the way you wanna spend your time. But put— set aside some of those things that you think you have to do and really look at them and say, do I need to? Is there something that I can cut back on? How can I look after myself? So I hope that you have an amazing holiday season, and I hope that this helps you to find a way to find a lot of joy and happiness throughout this holiday season, and that you find some time for yourself. And that you're able to rejuvenate and to repower, to reenergize so that you can start the new year as a more rounded, amazing, beautiful, and whole person. I hope you have an amazing holiday season, beautiful regardless of which holiday you're celebrating or not. Maybe you're not celebrating any holidays and you can take advantage of the time where everybody else is super busy. Whatever it is you're doing in this month of December, I hope that you enjoy it. I hope that you find time for yourself, and I look forward to talking to you next week. Have a great day. Bye now. Thank you so much for listening to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. Your support means the world to me. You can find show notes for this episode and other goodies at overgiversanonymous.ca. And if you enjoyed this episode or you enjoy the podcast in general, why not join us in the Overgivers Anonymous Facebook group where you can connect with overgivers from all over the world? Head on over to geekygirl.ca/group.
