Happy Holidays to You, With Love

Christmas week. From what I can gather, it's one of the most stressful weeks of the year. Families under pressure to produce just the right presents for children and the costs going up by the minute. Decorations demanding to be dug out, repaired, augmented, and put up. Extended family and friends with expectations that contradict each other. A hundred details vying for attention besides what's already normally on your plate. And, of course, you're supposed to be smiling radiantly through it all.

And the alternative, of course, is sitting alone in your living room without funds, trying to figure out how you wound up isolated while the rest of the world is dancing all around you. With these two options, no wonder people get depressed -- and even suicidal -- during "the holidays."

Then, on top of it all, we have our diabetes to think about. (Sigh.) Glazed ham and candied sweet potatoes. Green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup and fried onion rings. Buttered rolls and fruit cake and all the family favorites piled and stacked and eaten until everyone else is lying stupefied on sofas or recliners. And we're crying into a napkin somewhere, either feeling sorry for ourselves or beating ourselves up for shooting our glucose through the roof. Right?

It doesn't have to be this way.

First of all, stress doesn't just occur during holidays and we always have excuses to eat inappropriately, if we want to. So this coming week, I'll use the same tools I use the rest of the year. As for what I'll eat (and not eat), I cover that in my book, Your Life Isn't Over ~ It May Have Just Begun!

And my ordinary life is stressful, so addressing stress is part of my every day. I run. I get massages. I watch old re-runs of America's Favorite Home Videos before I go to bed at night. I take three deep long slow breaths when I feel overwhelmed, as if I could fill my whole body with air and then push it all out until there's no more left to exhale. I sit quietly for five or ten minutes (in the bathroom, if necessary) -- not making lists in my mind, but just feeling myself breathe or maybe remembering pleasant times in the past. I let go of my own and other's expectations because a week from now, it'll all be over (for good or ill) and how important is all this really anyway?

I walk around the block or the park or the house, thinking about things I'm grateful for, keeping it simple. I'm alive. The sun is shining. I'm sipping my favorite tea. My toes still wiggle. Libraries are free and they rent more than books. Birds sing. I can still find ways to be useful if I'm willing to be. (A kind word, a smile, or a telephone call can change someone else's day, can even save their life.)

And every now and again, I watch this video: