A peek behind the curtain
The Falling for Fall Challenge started today. If you had been meaning to join, but forgot, then by all means, use the link and sign yourself up. I will do my best to catch you up with any emails you missed. Each day of the challenge you receive an email with one small, mindful practice. For example, today’s task is to choose an affirmation for yourself for the week. And I made the prettiest graphics for this challenge, y’all. Wait until you see them!
Since this week’s free challenge is all set and ready to go, I thought I’d let you know what else I am working on. First, I’m preparing slides for a one-hour “power hour” for someone else’s membership group. Second, I am dreaming and journaling about the next offering here.
Photo credit to Simon Berger at Unsplash
What I know so far is that it’s going to be called ALL IS CALM, and that it will be about simplifying what we do and having mindful holidays this year.
Here in the United States, we continue to deal with COVID in an ad hoc way that doesn’t always bring peace of mind, and is extremely likely to mean that our usual holiday activities—shopping at the mall, traveling, getting together with lots of people—are not advisable. Shopping will have to be done sooner when done online to allow for postal delays that we keep hearing about thanks to the new guy in charge of the USPS. Gatherings may be a super bad idea unless they can be managed outside.
ALL IS CALM is going to be about reassessing what it is we do for the holidays, and deciding what to keep, what to add, and what to let go of.
I don’t know about you, but I do know that most of the work that is spent in dealing with the holidays—whether it’s Diwali, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, or Kwanzaa— falls on women. The cleaning. The shopping, The cooking. The wrapping. The planning. The decorating. The emotional pressure of making sure that everyone else is happy and fed at all times.
All of it falls on women.
It is a lot, even in a good year. And I’m pretty sure we can agree that this isn’t an especially good year.
So while this new program is not 100% created yet (as I sit here writing this blog post), I am 100% clear that it is about us granting ourselves some grace. About setting aside a bit of time for ourselves to assess what we’ve always done—whether it’s the meals or the decorations or the gifts or the programming—and to decide if it’s what we still want to do, or whether there are some things we want to let go of.
It’s also about choosing some small practices to help sustain you throughout the season. From Halloween to Thanksgiving and right until New Year’s Eve.
I hope you will drop me a comment below or send me a note and let me know if it sounds good to you!
