I have a confession: the holiday season as an adult human person has been complicated for me.

And before we go further: to my friends who love the holidays or crave togetherness, traditions or nostalgia, we might not see eye to eye on this. I honor your joy, or even your grief of missing someone, during this season. May we all invite in our own experience of the celebrations in which we participate.

And, that is the question I find myself wrestling with – what would an un-complicated holiday season look like for me?

The heart of the tangle is that, in the past, the weeks surrounding Thanksgiving and Christmas are the times I most easily abandon myself. It’s the people-pleasing part of me that comes out at this time of the year, saying yes when I want to say no. It feels uncomfortable to share that, given that these are supposed to be reflective times of gratitude and giving and those are practices that are supposed to feel good, connect us more deeply to ourselves and to others. What could be more human than desiring that connection?

The way I’ve celebrated holidays in the past sometimes feels like I’m performing gratitude and giving and togetherness because that is what I’m supposed to do, rather than actually feeling those things. And if I choose to not participate, then the story goes that I’m destined to feel lonely during the most wonderful time of the year. That fear of being alone because I feel the wrong things or need a different version of the holidays in order to connect with the sentiments behind them keeps me in the cycle of choosing everyone else’s happy holidays over my own.

Which brings me to what a truly un-complicated holiday season looks like for me in this phase of life: being able to move slowly and reflectively toward the end of the year, with time for writing and making, snuggled up with my animals and a good book while burning a delicious candle and a record plays on a turntable, surrounded by sparkling twinkly lights, and having genuine moments of goodwill toward the people I care about near and far, even if we aren’t physically together. Being able to give from what I actually have and want to offer, instead of feeling the pull to participate in endless consumerism, feels like the spirit of giving that I want to embody.

And the world I long to create welcomes all feelings during the holidays – joyful, cozy, complicated, grieving, nostalgic, grateful, frustrated, cold, warm, safe, secure, wild, calm, familial, friendly, or solitary – so long as they are your own feelings and you get the choice (a real choice, not the pretend choice of choosing other people’s expectations for you) for how you want to celebrate.