This is Your Annual Olympics 🤠🎄✨

Storytime with Ruby

How are your holidays ramping up?

Personally, I've been crying for two days, ever since my mom decided to rent us a car from the airport instead of coming to get us tomorrow.

Now before you roll your eyes at my melodrama...

Am I just a spoiled bratty diva? Partly, sure. I won't deny my own tendencies.

But is this also just THE HOLIDAYS holidaying in true holiday fashion?

ding ding ding! 1000% yes.

It's like, only at the holidays can your feelings get brutally hurt by an inevitable change of plans within the chaos of crowded travel, the persistence of your family's same ol' dysfunction, unknown territory of new marriage dynamics (maybe your own? or maybe your mom's? for me, it's both), and the very human inclination to try to overshadow the chilling bite of dark winter with exaggerated cheer!

Sometimes it makes me wonder: Why do we do this to ourselves?!

When I reflect back over the years, and all the many holiday season challenges, there have been floods of tears, several post-event breakdowns, and plenty of hostile words exchanged.

And yet, there truly is something magical about it all.

Yes, the lights, the warmth, the togetherness. Those can all feel magical.

But I'm talking about the magic of the messiness of it all.

That is, if and when we allow it to be alchemized.

If you're anything like me then you spend most of your days considering how you can grow. Know better, do better. Contribute to something bigger. Untangled ancestral trauma. Dismantle the belief that something's wrong with you. Read the book. Watch the TedTalk. Download the free hypnosis meditation. Think. Journal. Talk therapy. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I recently had an ah-ha moment about growth:

It's all just learning until it's put into action.

We cannot grow in a silo of our own obsessive making.

Yes, we can study and go to therapy and LEARN. We can gather insight and connect the dots, and yes we can get somewhere through reflection and contemplation and changing our thought patterns.

But until those insights are put into action, they don't necessarily prove any growth has happened at all.

I think the self-dev industry has really led us astray in this, making us believe that if we fix ourselves, then we'll be worthy of relationship.

But it's IN the relationships that healing takes place.

It can be brutal. Definitely messy. Inconvenient. Seem unnecessary. Come out of nowhere....

Like my breakdown about a car rental.

But if I tell my mom that it hurt my feelings. That it doesn't feel like it's totally about the car situation. That it feels like my fear of abandonment. That it feels like I'm scared of not having freedom in our relationship because of new marriage dynamics...

She gets the chance to say, "oh honey, I love you so much and I'm not going anywhere."

And while my survivor-mode may continue to be suspicious about that, there's a part of me that sighs with relief.

I feel seen. Heard. An opportunity for healing opens up.

And as inconvenient and messy as the feelings feel, that healing has clearly been longing to click into place.

It just so happened to find its big break in an unexpected car rental.

The holidays are like the Olympics of growth.

Every year is an opportunity to showcase your #gains. Sometimes that looks like saying no to some events, setting a boundary. Other times it means being open to that event being different, staying present to possibility. Or maybe it's a mix, embracing your freedom to do the season according to you.

Whatever it is, know that I see you. I'm cheering for you. And I'm here for you if you need to lock yourself in the bathroom and reply to this email as a form of external processing. 😅

You've got this,
Ruby

PS Check out our new *free* course for tools to making decisions that feel right and quite honestly it will also help you survive the Holiday Olympics. Let us know how it goes!