This Is My Holiday Confession

Today I want to say...

A NEW YEAR Thank You piece, just for you.

Thank You.

None of this would be possible without Word Nerds such as you, and I hope the last year of Writing Almost Everyday has helped earn me a place on your metaphoric hearth.

I hope I’ve earned your time and support.

Truly, if it weren’t for you supportive Word Nerds here, I probably wouldn’t be able to justify writing every single weekday.

A lot of people write once or twice a month on Substack for paying subscribers!…

So my neurotic self is over-doing the best-that-I-can as perpetual thanks to you but:

I take your support and presence to heart.

So, I hope to keep going: archiving and expelling!

To say this was a humble holiday is saying the least.

We are living without heat right now [just little portable heaters in a couple of rooms] and will be for awhile (my paychecks wont come in for some time and both our paychecks halt for weeks over the holiday. Poorly timing, as many can relate) …

BUT we are used to making the most out of anything and everything and I truly think it’s that gift of the magi that’s really made the magic in our lives.

I really do.

As a kid, my parents joked that I loved riding the bus to Disney World more than the park itself. I thought the bus was the park, essentially; The little things just as much a thrill.

I’ve always wanted to keep that alive even when we’ve had the rare seasons of plenty in our past- and there have been plenty … but humble seasons somehow draw us closer for those with the right heart, priorities, open eyes to what our life has really been.

So I’m grateful for open eyes this season.

Grateful for small gestures even amid oceans of heartache and loss…. And, I have to say with absolute clarity that I’m eternally thankful for our Fairy Godmother named Bonnie, who has been our friend for a very long time (former ComeBacks dancer, which I still wish could one day comeback) and a perpetual giver of time, words, and love.

I cannot put into words the type of magic she brings to our lives, even when it feels we don’t “deserve it”. (We DONT deserve her to be clear…but she somehow keeps on loving us anyways.)

She is the spirit of holiday giving in ways that always astound. It’s about her intention, gesture and care that means the most. She knows the people she loves so deeply. And, this year, she changed our entire day single handedly.

[Without going into detail… that’s all the kindness you need to know. But it’s nice to know that people like her still exist out there, isn’t it? I think it is, because so many of YOU are like her, and we forget that the world has Golden Rule upholders still in its midst.]

I’m not sure I can overstate enough how much I’m thankful for YOU too if you’re reading this right now.

If your eyes are on these words, you deserve to feel appreciated and loved (even if I’m trash at replying quickly but always working on it and always will!)

You have changed our life.

My life.

Some of you have been a lighthouse in the dark.

Some of you have said a sentence at a time when it felt life saving, even if you normally consider yourself a “lurker” like I am with others (takes one to know one?)

Some of the wildest adventures, travels, and experiences have come from writing and talking with friends here - for decades now - and not under appreciating the value of a good old fashioned pen pal.

We are like war era letter writers?

We’ve never met, but we truly have meaningful conversations and support to profound levels.

Even my mothering has been upheld by the help and joy found here; So many unbelievable gestures that benefited their passage in this world.

I know that social media can be toxic and I often write (lately) about keeping a safer distance between the value we place in our phones.

I’m on my phone so little these days - mostly using it as a camera instead - so, therefore, I suck at responses, but pop on to copy/paste and then read what you have to say, always.

Even so: I frustrate those I love in person to a level that’s hard to hold sometimes.

By wanting in-person relationships more, I accidentally anger. But I’m forever labeled as the “social media sharer” to those who have an idea of a person from youth that’s not truth - just because of this glimpse of a 9 to 5.

We tend to think that writers are always TMI and have no lines. That anyone who gives of themselves creatively (especially if since a young age, like I did with my column, or even my early blogging days called Makeover Momma) is all that they are; That we know them already, without even trying.

On the contrary, I wish the world understood that:

We can be private people and still be creatives.

We can be advocates but still have boundaries.

We can be online for work but offline for life.

I wish more understood that and, oddly, I feel like my online friends often do? (Ah, sweet irony). But even so:

I know I diminish and defend my time online a lot because I want to avoid the ‘in real life’ criticism that’s been a mental riptide for a while now… but I wish I’d never let it impact me so much.

This is my holiday confession, from me to you.

Whether or not you celebrate something the last couple of weeks, it’s never a bad day to give thanks. And to ask for forgiveness.

Our lives would be monochrome without some of the pen pals we’ve met here.

So today I want to say: thank you for being my holiday gift!

Thank you for reading in a world that hates too many words.

Thank you for relating even when it hurts.

---

“Holidays can make us reexamine what it means to be a community and if we can relax in ours, like we can in others. They can force us to look at the future, whether in a sick or abled body… something that’s sometimes soul crushing if through the lens of the first option. They can push us to see what was once pushing us in a negative way, even if we told ourselves it was good. Or to consider what peace feels like, not just on holy nights, and… if we’ll ever find it.”

xo

Kindly consider booming a supportive Word Nerd if you’re able (every little bit counts and helps keep this ongoing memoir going, or… Share with you someone you like?