Before the Holidays Get Here, Protect Your Peace

BY: JANEÉ WEAVER

For many women, the holiday season comes with an unspoken job description: make the plans, buy the gifts, cook the food, remember the traditions, manage the family dynamics, keep the kids happy, finish the year strong at work, and somehow enjoy yourself too.

This year, prepare for the holidays differently.

Don’t just prepare your home, your calendar and your gift list. Prepare your mental health.

Before the invitations start coming and the expectations start piling up, decide what you actually have the capacity for. You are allowed to say no, leave early, and spend less. You are also allowed to change a tradition that no longer works for you and to love your family and still need boundaries with them.

The goal isn't to create the perfect holiday for everyone around you. The goal is to make it through the season without abandoning yourself in the process. Protect your peace and remember: you deserve to experience the joy you're working so hard to create for everyone else.

So, here is your Pre-Holiday Mental Health Checklist:

• Check your capacity before committing.
  Before saying yes, ask yourself: Do I actually have the time, money and emotional energy for this?

• Decide your boundaries before you need them.
  Know which conversations, behaviors and situations you aren't willing to entertain this year.

• Give yourself permission to disappoint people.
  Someone else's disappointment does not automatically mean you made the wrong decision.

• Create a realistic holiday budget.
  Financial stress is still stress. You don't have to prove your love through spending.

• Protect some white space on your calendar.
  Every available day does not need an activity. Leave some time to rest.

• Identify your people.
  Who can you call when family dynamics, grief, loneliness or stress become heavy? Decide now, not when you're already overwhelmed.

• Keep the routines that keep you grounded.
  Consider regular therapy, prayer, exercise, sleep, meditation, journaling and/or quiet mornings. Whatever helps you feel like yourself shouldn't automatically disappear because it's the holidays.

• Make your own joy part of the plan.
  Ask yourself one simple question: What would make this holiday season feel good to me? Then put some of that on the calendar too.