Loving Your Actual Christmas, with Alexandra Kuykendall

The Heidi St. John Podcast

Heidi St. John

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2017

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I have my friend Alexandra Kuykendall on with me today and we’re talking more about enjoying Christmas for what it is, learning to relish what is right in front of us and focusing on what really matters. Less is truly more in this season!
You can read more about Alexandra Kuykendall’s experiment to put an end to the holiday madness in her new book Loving My Actual Christmas: An Experiment in Relishing the Season. A trusted voice in mothering circles, Alex speaks to women around the world about issues of parenting, faith and identity. She is the Cohost of The Open Door Sisterhood Podcast and has also authored Loving My Actual Life and The Artist’s Daughter. Alex lives in the shadows of downtown Denver with her husband Derek and their 4 daughters who range in age from 15 to 6. You can connect with her at AlexandraKuykendall.com.
Loving My Actual Christmas: An Experiment in Relishing the Season – The Christmas season is a particularly difficult time for women to slow down and relish what’s right in front of them. An annual marker for many, it is a holiday that can often remind us how life is not going as we’d planned. Our family relationships remain strained, our finances stretched, and our schedules stuffed with too much to do in too little time.
Following the formula of her successful Loving My Actual Life, Alexandra Kuykendall shares with readers her own personal experiment to be completely present in her life as it is during the holiday season. Addressing the themes of Advent and Christmas, she reflects on hope, love, joy, peace, and relishing the season, with practical pullouts on common Christmas stressors, such as finances, schedules, and extended family. Kuykendall’s signature candor helps women go easy on themselves, remember what truly matters, and find joy in their imperfect Christmases.
It’s not too late for this year. Get the Kindle edition and start reading right now!
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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, this is Heidi St. John. Welcome to the busy mom podcast. Mary Christmas today is Friday, December 22nd.
0:09.0	And as promised, I have a special guest on the podcast today. My friend Alexander Kirkindall is here to talk about her book, Loving My Actual Christmas.
0:19.5	So stick around. I think you're going to be encouraged.
0:30.5	So I've been talking about this book several times on the podcast last week. So I hope you guys have been checking it out over at Amazon.
0:38.0	We're really close to Christmas today and Alex has written a fantastic book that I think is going to encourage you and bless you and hopefully help you not to lose your mind.
0:47.0	So without further ado, because we've got so many things to talk about today. Welcome to the podcast. Alex, I'm so glad that you're here.
0:55.0	Oh, thank you. Thanks for having me. Thanks for making the time you and I've had a little bit of a little bit of a time. A circus actually trying to get you on here. So I'm glad it worked out.
1:05.0	Yeah, well, I'm learning that if you have a Christmas book, you get busy at Christmas time.
1:11.0	So are you loving? So here's the first question. Are you loving your actual Christmas this year in the middle of all this stuff?
1:17.0	Well, I will say today I have a little bit of stress because I have been traveling some and doing some speaking things and interviews and all that.
1:29.0	And this is my week leading up to Christmas. You know, just I'm trying to cram a lot in. But what I've learned is that I need to let a lot go.
1:38.0	So I'm just going to get done what I can get done. And I'm really going to make time for the things that I really want to do with my kids.
1:46.0	Yeah, yeah, I totally hear you. And tonight I've got a my daughter, Sailor is singing in a big Christmas performance downtown. So we're we're going to be going to do that as a family.
1:58.0	But I'll tell you what we have I've sort of embraced my minimalist Christmas or this Christmas.
2:06.0	And I think I'm actually loving my actual Christmas better that way. So yeah, I think sometimes it's okay. It's just season. See that so tell. So first of all, let's this is what I always do in the podcast.
2:17.0	And kissers a lot of mom is listening to this today and you're a mom. You have four girls. Tell me a little bit about your family.
2:25.0	Well, we live in Denver right near downtown and my husband.
2:30.0	Hi, city. Yes, my high city.
2:33.0	My husband runs a ministry here in town called Providence Network. And they provide transitional housing to people coming out of homelessness.
2:43.0	Very good. So he works a lot with people who are in addictions recovery or leaving domestic violence.
2:50.0	Those are kind of their target groups. And he does that all day. And I have kids at three different schools because of the age span I have.
3:00.0	But fortunately living in the city, everything's really close to me geographically. So my kids are within a mile of me.
	...

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