12/26/2025
Thanks for the reminder, James Spann
Perfectly timed⏳️
I'll only add that the holiday season encompasses much more than Christmas.
~~~~~
A REMINDER:
Christmas is often portrayed as a season of joy, celebration, and togetherness, but for many people it can be one of the hardest times of the year.
The constant messages of happiness and abundance can quietly magnify feelings of loneliness, grief, or loss. Those who have lost loved ones, are estranged from family, or are facing major life changes may find the holidays intensify emotions they work all year to manage.
Financial stress also weighs heavily during Christmas.
The pressure to buy gifts, host gatherings, or maintain traditions can be overwhelming for families already struggling to make ends meet. Parents may feel guilt or anxiety when they cannot provide what they believe is expected, and individuals facing job loss, illness, or housing insecurity often feel invisible while the world around them appears to celebrate.
For others, the season brings reminders of trauma, depression, or anxiety that don’t pause for the holidays.
Shorter days and long nights can deepen seasonal depression, and the expectation to be cheerful can make it harder to ask for help.
Some of you reading this are going through the hardest time of your life.
I took the sunset photo attached to this post earlier this evening.
It is a view down the path of an EF-3 tornado that tore through our neighborhood and hit our home in March 2021. Damage was horrible, and the recovery was a long process.
But, we noticed we now get this amazing sunset view.
A blessing from the storm.
Just remember, all troubled times are temporary.
Better days are ahead.
Never give up.
You are reading this for a reason.
Your blessing from the storm is coming.
Recognizing that Christmas isn’t merry for everyone encourages empathy and kindness — a reminder that sometimes the greatest gift is simply noticing, listening, and offering support to those who are struggling.
*End of James Spann post.
~~~~~
💜🕯✨️🦋
Personal note, from ~
Luminous Kimmy B:
By the way, Derek Hart has years of family/marriage relationship therapy summed up in a few minutes:
🗣 post & link follows~
I watched a man at Starbucks today at 515am spend 85 minutes with over 25 suggestions trying to fix his wife's pain.
She failed the bar exam.
He had no idea how to be with her.
So I refilled my already too strong cold brew and began:
You think the greatest relationship skill is knowing what to say.
It is not.
The greatest skill you will ever learn in love is this:
To sit with another human’s pain
and not try to fix it.
To stay.
To listen.
To let their feelings exist in the room without rushing to control them.
Most of us were never taught how to do this.
We were taught to offer solutions.
We were taught to cheer people up.
We were taught to say, “Look on the bright side,” or “At least it’s not worse,” or “You just need to…”
That is not connection.
That is management.
When your partner is hurting, your nervous system feels it as danger.
Their tears, their sadness, their anger, their confusion, all of it lights up your body.
You feel blamed, even when they never said the words.
You feel accused, even if they are just talking about their day.
You feel like you are failing, just because their eyes look heavy.
So you do the fastest thing you know.
You fix.
You explain.
You defend.
You give advice.
You interrupt.
You say, “You know what you should do…”
You say, “You are taking it too personally…”
You say, “You always do this…”
You think you are helping, and something deep inside you really is trying to help,
but what your partner’s nervous system hears is:
“I cannot hold your pain.”
“Your feelings are too much.”
“Please stop being how you are in front of me.”
So they shut down.
Or they get louder.
Or they get harsh.
Or they go numb.
And both of you are now in pain,
but neither of you feels understood.
Listening to pain without fixing is not passive.
It is one of the most intense things you will ever do.
It means you let their feelings touch you.
It means you let your heart be moved by what happened to them,
even if you do not agree with every detail.
It means you are willing to feel uncomfortable,
so they do not have to feel alone.
That is the whole point.
Your partner does not need a judge.
They need a witness.
Someone who can say, with their eyes and their voice and their silence:
“I see that this hurts.”
“I can feel that this matters to you.”
“I am not going anywhere while you feel this.”
Why fixing does not work:
Fixing puts the spotlight back on you, your ideas, your logic. Their experience disappears.
Fixing moves too fast. Pain needs to be seen before it can move.
Fixing is usually your way of escaping your own discomfort, not their suffering.
Fixing often sounds like criticism, even when you think it sounds like wisdom.
Fixing tells their nervous system, “Your feeling is a problem to solve,” not “Your feeling is welcome here.”
When you learn how to be with pain instead of fixing it, everything changes.
Imagine this:
Your partner comes home, eyes tired, and says, “I feel like nobody hears me at work. I feel invisible.”
Old habit:
You say, “Just speak up more,” or “You are overthinking it,” or “You hate that job anyway.”
Their body hears: “You are wrong to feel this. You should already know how to fix it.”
New skill:
You pause.
You soften your face.
You let your shoulders drop.
You look right at them and say,
“Tell me more.”
“Where did you feel that the most today.”
“I can see how defeated you look. That hurts to see.”
“I want to understand what this feels like inside you.”
You have not solved anything yet.
You have done something far more important.
You have made their inner world a place that is allowed to exist in front of you.
You have told their nervous system,
“You are not alone inside this feeling.”
That is what heals.
Sometimes your partner will talk for five minutes and then say,
“I feel better. I just needed to say it out loud.”
You did nothing, and you did everything.
You did not argue with reality.
You did not edit their story.
You did not rush them out of their own heart.
You stayed.
This is why listening to pain is the greatest relationship skill you will ever learn:
Because pain is the doorway to the real relationship.
When somebody shows you where they ache,
they are handing you the map to their history,
their childhood,
their past betrayals,
their deepest fears.
If you can hold that map with care,
they will hand it to you again.
If you fold that map up and tell them to stop being dramatic,
they will learn to hide it from you.
Over time, the couples who thrive are not the ones who avoid pain.
They are the ones who have built a shared ritual around it.
The ritual goes something like this:
One person says,
“Something in me is really hurting right now.”
The other answers,
“I am listening. I want to understand.”
Then the hard part.
You let there be silence.
You let them search for words.
You let them stammer, or cry, or get confused.
You do not rush in with a lesson.
You stay curious, not corrective.
You can ask questions, if they are gentle questions:
“What was the hardest moment today.”
“What did you tell yourself about you when that happened.”
“Where do you feel it in your body right now.”
Questions that deepen, not questions that debate.
And when they are done, you do not grade their feelings.
You do not evaluate if they are “fair.”
You do not compare it to your own.
You say things like:
“I did not realize it hurt that much.”
“I get why that would feel awful.”
“It makes sense your body reacts that way.”
“Thank you for trusting me with this.”
That is emotional resonance.
My nervous system meets your nervous system in the exact place that is hurting.
No fixing.
No lecturing.
No performance.
Just two humans, both a little softer,
both a little less alone.
Will there be a time for problem solving. Of course.
But problem solving only works after pain has been held.
If you skip that part, every solution will feel like a rejection.
If you include that part, even imperfect solutions will feel like love.
So if you want one sentence to carry into your relationship, let it be this:
“When you hurt, my job is not to fix you, my job is to stay with you.”
Learn that, practice that, live that,
and your relationship will change in ways no technique book can touch.
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