This is Hello Freedom and I'm your host Terry Cole.

For almost two decades I've been a licensed psychotherapist and transformation coach and on this show I will bring you simple strategies based on practical psychology, inspiring expert interviews, and my own insights and observations from my time on the front lines of the fascinating

worlds of entertainment, empowerment, and mental health.

Now let's get going with today's episode. Well, hello and welcome to Hello Freedom.

I am your host Terry Cole and I'm really, really excited that you're hanging out with me today like

I am every single time you're hanging out with me and never take it for granted I

super appreciate you spending time right here with me. So today I want to talk about the

holidays. They're here. We are in the throes of the holidays and how do you feel? Do you feel happy and bright? Is everything lovely? Or are you

like zillions of other people where the holidays actually create depression, a sense of sadness, the holiday blues, as we like to call them.

This is more common than people would like to think. I had this

experience myself a bunch of years ago when my father died. He died in November

right before Thanksgiving and by Christmas I celebrate Christmas

I was not remotely feeling in the Christmas spirit. I was really really bummed out. I was missing him but it really

for me it was the first losing a parent my mother is still alive. I'm grateful. Losing a

parent at a young age I was in my early 30s when that happened.

There's something about that experience that when you have both of your parents

alive regardless of your relationship to them, it's as if they are

a barrier between you and your own mortality. And when my father died very young, he was 61,

and died super suddenly, wasn't sick at all had a massive

coronary and died suddenly it's almost like I stepped one foot closer to my own

mortality and at that age when that was before I was diagnosed with cancer in my own life so I hadn't

thought much at all about my own mortality and I was really bummed out and so I started looking around and usually Vic and I, my

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