Good evening, everybody. How you all doing? Welcome to the show. Holiday times are upon us.

I even hate that we have to talk about some of these topics sometimes, but this is a mental

health show. I care about all y'all in their mental health first. We have a lot of holidays

coming up right now. A lot of us only think of certain holidays, but there are a lot of holidays

that aren't as prevalent as maybe the Christian holidays or the white holidays. So there's a wealth of them. And they often mean people

coming together and celebrating in community. So we're going to talk about ways to really deal

with the holiday and our mental health and emotions during that. And that means dealing with others,

dealing with our relationships to our bodies and food

and family members and oh my gosh all sorts of stuff comes up for some of us bless if you're all just

love and light when you see your family that's awesome enjoy that for others stepping back into

a little bit of trauma there's anxiety anticip, there's depression, all sorts of stuff.

People's sobrieties, maybe feel a little more fragile and weak.

So we're going to talk about ways to weather that.

First thing is don't be afraid to change the traditions.

And I mean that in every way, shape, and form.

We often think that there's one way to do something or the right way or the way we've always

done it.

It's okay to say, hey, moving forward, we're doing it differently. For whatever the reason is, we are going to make everything potluck

as opposed to having one person host it. We're going to do it on the day before, the day after.

Maybe we're going to be sober and everyone can go out and have alcohol afterwards, but we want

to make it a safe space for those that don't drink, whatever it is. You're allowed to change things.

Traditions are allowed to evolve. In fact, they need to because the needs of the people have to

...