Welcome to Let It Be Easy with Susie Moore.

Are you spending the holidays alone this year or do you have a very different situation this year,

perhaps to former years that you think might have been happier, more fulfilling, more full of people that you love and experiences that you love.

I wanted to do an episode on this today because the holidays can bring up a lot of emotions, right?

It can make us feel of course a lot of joy in the festive spirit

and there are Christmas lights and there are holiday candles and I mean

it's definitely a consumer season right we are really set up to feel a lot of emotions

around this time of year and it seems as if you know almost wherever you go there's holiday

music playing or something jingling and there are little

santa's everywhere right it gets earlier every year as they say but I know from

my own experience and as someone who loves other people and accepts all experiences,

that this time of year can feel really isolating. It can feel heavy, it can feel full of grief. It can be a period that we dread we just want it to be January already right we're like just kind of need to get through this. This is a season that doesn't bring me all of this holiday spirit

and doesn't fill me with this feeling of wanting to sing and dance and be with other people.

Sometimes it's because we've lost someone. I lost my father at 19. He died of addiction and my favorite Christmas memories were playing Scrabble with him. When I was a teenager I walked at a restaurant and so I would often walk the Christmas lunch at the restaurant and my dad was so proud of me for being such a hard-working young girl and when I got to his house

after my shift he would have like a roast ready for us and he would have the Scrabble Board out.

And oh my gosh, if I could replay,

I don't really get emotional now.

If I could replay any day in my history,

it would probably be one of those days

because they were just so happy for me.

There was no gift exchange, there was nothing really given or fancy,

but us being together playing Scrabble, enjoying a Christmas lunch, was everything to me.

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