Holidaze
If you’re like me, then you probably have what I like to gently call a “complicated relationship” with the winter holiday season. There are few times of year so consistently stressful and challenging to navigate. There are many reasons for this–family expectations, a history of difficult holidays, normally navigable commercial spaces jam-packed with shoppers, the cold and dark of winter, etc. Whatever the particular stressors, the winter holidays have a distinct way of heightening difficult feelings and memories. This can make attempting to navigate the holidays with mindfulness and self-care pretty hard.
Ideally, holidays are times of year where we’re able to stop, gather our loved ones, and share gratitude for the gift of our lives and the abundance of the world around us. We celebrate the births and deaths of our most important teachers, prophets, and saints; mark the bounty of the harvest; venerate our elders, ancestors, and soldiers; we give thanks for one another. Many holidays are marked by customs of gratitude and humility.
But as I and many other queer people will tell you, that’s not our story. Many of us have been rejected by our families of origin, and many of us have been rejected by our spiritual communities of origin, many of us are incredibly lonely. Those rejections, and the sense of isolation that comes along with them– are deep wounds. With years of work processing the grief, there will still be times where we’ll feel the ache of them.
Navigating a time and a season that is–on the surface–about family, love, warmth, and the hope of renewal in the darkest time of year really sucks sometimes. Part of surviving as a queer person in the world means learning to build a coping toolkit that we can draw from when traditional support systems available to many others fail us. This can look like a lot of different things–but below I’ll share some examples from my own toolkit that I pull out when things start to feel heavy and dark.
SOME THINGS IN JAKE’S TOOLKIT:
Good sleep - quality sleep is a good indicator of how I’m doing generally, and is also one of the best supports of a healthy mind. When I’m not sleeping well, it’s a good sign something is stressing me out and that I ought to be paying more attention to my sleep hygiene practices. Generally I see a direct correlation between the quality of my sleep and my overall sense of well-being.
Mindfulness practice - 10-30 minutes of mindful breathing in a quiet place helps me ground and center in the present when I’m feeling stressed about the holidays. Staying grounded in the present is a useful skill to cultivate when (if you’re like me) there’s a tendency to catastrophize the future or fixate on the past. A mindfulness practice offers a growing reprieve from the things in the past that have happened that we cannot change and from a future that we cannot truly predict.
Writing practice - spending a few minutes writing about what I’m feeling and how those feelings feel in my body gives me room to explore and process emotions in a safe way. Maybe spend a few minutes listing out things that you’re grateful for on a stressful day. Don’t judge what or how you’re writing, just write.
Movement - This can look like anything from doing jumping jacks in your apartment, to following along with a youtube yoga video, to taking a nice long walk. Movement is good for the body and it’s good for the mind. It’s also good for disrupting long stretches of sedentary stillness, a pattern it becomes very easy to fall into in winter.
Video games - Okay this won’t be useful for everyone, but I find gaming to be both a relief and a release. A relief because it can be nice to step away from all of the buzz of holiday energy and expectations by stepping into the world of a game for a while. A release because games can be quite cathartic with the way they activate the brain’s internal work-pleasure reward system. Solving a puzzle can feel good, and at a time of year where one may need some extra good feelings games can be a helpful resource.
Community - Whether in person, on the phone, or video call, sometimes having someone to talk to about what’s heavy on the heart can go a long way towards helping a person feel more grounded and connected to the world. Good friends have a way of making us feel seen the way we want to be seen, and for queer folks–who generally spend a good chunk of our lives working to be seen by others the way we see and understand ourselves–this is especially important.
Perhaps some of these tools are in your toolkit. Or maybe none of them are–that’s okay too! Building skills and resources for navigating tough times is valuable, but it’s also a journey and has to begin somewhere. Talking about our difficult feelings has a way of helping us process them. Queer people have been mobilizing peer-lead talking-based support resources for decades in the form of hotlines, warmlines, and resource guides that anyone anywhere can access and utilize. Below are some national Queer/LGBTQ+ crisis resources and call lines available throughout the holiday season. These can be a lifeline connection to queer community–please reach out to them if you’re in need:
LGBTQ Holiday Survival Guide - a comprehensive list of strategies, ideas, and resources for navigating the holidays with or without family support, created by Main Line Health in Philadelphia
LGBT National Help Center - peer-supported LGBTQ+ hotline services for general support, youth support, senior support, and coming out support.
Sage - Advocacy and Services for LGBTQ+ elders
The Trevor Project - immediate crisis support for LGBTQ+ youth, 24/7, 365 days a year
Trans Lifeline - a peer-supported trans community hotline created by and for trans people
The holidays are often fraught and complicated for queer folks. Navigating them skillfully, mindfully, and in healthy ways can require some healthy skills-driven coping strategies. Not everyone has these yet, but resources do exist for helping queer people connect with other queer people to process the stress of the season in ways that are validating and nourishing.
