How I'm Navigating Holiday Intolerance With Belonging and Compassion
Let's lean into our messiness and imperfection, and gather the courage to create a more compassionate and inclusive future.
Feeling disconnected during the holidays is a common struggle, especially when your family is neurodiverse.
Let's prioritize self-compassion and acknowledge that we're not alone in our struggles. By lifting our own suffering, we can extend compassion to others.
Recognizing our common humanity can pave the way for a more compassionate and inclusive future. It's time to shift from fitting in to truly belonging. Your quirks make you uniquely you. It's okay to embrace messiness and imperfection.
Teaching others about inclusivity starts with embracing our own uniqueness. By leaning into self-compassion and acknowledging our shared humanity, we can foster a culture of empathy and understanding.
We’re talking about holiday disconnect, belonging, and compassion:
- Coping with feeling disconnected during the holidays
- Embracing self-compassion and recognizing common humanity
- Fostering acceptance and advocating for a more inclusive future
- The difference between fitting in and belonging
- Navigating triggers and stressors during the holiday season
7 questions to help you bring a deeper sense of belonging into your life:
How do you approach your uncomfortable feelings during the holidays?
How does the concept of perfectionism impact your holiday experiences and interactions with others? How do you try to navigate and shift away from the pressure of perfectionism during the holidays?
How does the idea of fitting in differ from belonging, and how can we avoid twisting ourselves into something that isn't authentic during the holiday season?
What are some ways that you remind yourself of your belonging and inherent goodness during times when you feel like you don't fit in?
How do you approach conversations with family and friends to foster a more inclusive and understanding environment during the holidays?
What are some practical steps you can take to create a more inclusive and supportive environment for those who may feel othered or excluded during holiday gatherings?
How do you show up authentically and embrace your uniqueness, quirks, and imperfections during holiday gatherings and interactions?
By embracing our authenticity, we can create a more inclusive and empathetic world. Let's navigate the holidays with compassion and belonging.
Links to Resources I Mentioned in the Video:
“You don’t need to do it everyone else’s way this holiday season.
You don’t need to fit in to belong.
Your child doesn’t need to fit in to belong.
You and your child both need to own who you are – boldly.
What I am doing is breaking stigmas.
Not for others – for myself.”
-Sonali Vongchusiri
Transcript:
How I'm Navigating Holiday Disconnect, Fitting In, Belonging, and Compassion
[00:00:00] The holidays bring up so much.
Especially, I just keep hearing this theme over and over again, of feeling disconnect, trying to fit in, that sense of not belonging.
What reminds you of your belonging? Even in times when you feel like you don't fit in?
My commitment when I start to feel othered, during this holiday, is to see the other person as me. To believe that everyone does well when they can. To put on the lens of self compassion.
Before I hit record, I was really discombobulated. I've been having so much trouble with the connection between Zoom and the microphone.
And I felt so frustrated like it's unfair or wrong that these things are happening that I could not pull my thoughts in and back to being present [00:01:00] with you guys. And that just pushes so many buttons for me, because what I bring to this community is my presence.
And if that's not here, Then I feel that disconnect and I feel, um, a sense of failure and loss.
it Does all come around full circle, and it's great. And we'll get there. I just had to name that today. Often, I kind of get my thoughts together before I hit record, and this time, I don't want to hit record and have it all together. Because, you know, you deserve to hear my messy process too! And to know none of us are alone in our mess and our, um, our stressors and our triggers.
This post on Instagram (Motherwell: Taking my special needs child to holiday gatherings breaks my heart) that got a lot of attention about this parent who was saying that their child has special needs, and is always being othered during holiday gatherings, [00:02:00] and because they didn't fit in socially, the cousins would um, reject them, and it was heartbreaking for this parent who was writing about this.
I was reading this and seeing the replies and like how, people were mad at cousins and I just always come back to kids do well if they can and honestly, so do adults, and if they haven't been taught and had things explained, then how are they going to know how to be inclusive and not be ableist and to see the other person as them? How are they gonna know? They're kids. Nobody has taught them. So why hasn't that parent gone and talked to the other adults? Their siblings? Say if my sister's kids were rejecting Ocean in some way I would talk to her.
That's the thing to do, not to just feel heartbroken and hurt about it, but to do something to change the culture, at least of the family. Cause if we don't advocate [00:03:00] for being inclusive, then we're going to raise ableist kids and we're going to perpetuate this cycle. And I need to be part of creating a inclusive future so that my son has that.
Thank you for talking about perfection. Trying to make everything perfect and how exhausting it is. Because it doesn't exist. Perfectionism is a made up myth that is really tied up with all the isms.
People focus so much on surviving. They forget how to share and model inclusivity. For sure. They also forget that they don't have to buy into that Perfectionism, that is part of hierarchical thinking. Thank you for saying that.
Perfectionism is a way of trying to claw our way out of the discomfort of the mess, right? If we can just smooth everything out and have it look good and be [00:04:00] beyond fault, beyond not fitting in somehow, shame, this is the idea of being beyond reproach. And reproach is really like a way of shaming people but we do have a choice to just step out of that hierarchy, step off the ladder completely.
And co create something completely different where we show our mess and we show our stressors and our pain and our triggers. And then we feel less alone in them because suddenly when I start talking about things, triggering me or being, frustrated or whatever it is, then other people relax.
That's what I've noticed. Now I feel better, right? And I haven't done anything good. I've just talked about like The fact that I'm messing up, and um, and my feelings around it. The thing about feelings is none of them are wrong. They're all [00:05:00] serving some purpose.
Hopefully that purpose is to find a way to repair and reconnect.
We're so often just focused on surviving the holidays. Where does that put us on the polyvagal ladder? If we're thinking about survival, then, we're in fight or flight. So rather than being where we'd like to be at the holidays, in a safe and social state, where we feel connected, we feel loved, that's what, that's the hallmark image, right? This place of all being together and cozy and everybody getting exactly what they want when they open their surprise gifts and lots of joy. But there's always another side to everything. So we want to be in that safe and social state. What actually happens is we go into survival mode because we don't want to look at those feelings and triggers and stuff coming up from the past[00:06:00]
and we forget how to be, um, our best selves, and how to see the other, whether they've caused us harm in the past. They are also human, and they're not going to know what our boundaries are. They're not going to know how to behave unless we teach them, unfortunately.
And if we show up messy and raw, it is so much easier for other people to drop their own perfectionism.
Tara Brach podcast talking about the difference between fitting in and belonging. And how we try and twist ourselves into something that isn't authentic. And that just causes more disconnect and stress.
I just saw this this morning and I loved it so much, this parenting coach Sonali [00:07:00] Vongchusiri. She has low vision, so she has a white cane, and showed a picture of how she and her kids had decorated it with red and green ribbons in like a spiral and it was just so lovely that she shared that. But what she also shared was the story that like in the past she had avoided using a cane because she wanted to pretend that she could see things that she couldn't see, and she wanted to fit in. But by Embracing the cane and embracing making it fun and having it stand out and reflect her humorous nature, I think it's a great lesson, in how to teach people about inclusivity. Whether that inclusivity is anti ableist or anti racist or whatever it is that you're up against in your either a chosen family or family. There are so many different groups where we have influence.
[00:08:00] So for me, thinking about how I'm going to show up ahead of time, and inoculating myself emotionally.
What reminds you of your belonging?
Even in times when you feel like you don't fit in?
How can you lean into the messiness? The imperfection? The quirkiness?
The things that make you uniquely you.?
You may come up with a word or a phrase that can remind you of your inherent goodness, your common humanity, that no matter what you're feeling or you're going through, someone else somewhere is feeling the same, going through something very, very similar.
[00:09:00]
my commitment when I start to feel othered during this holiday is to see the other person as me. To believe that everyone does well when they can. To put on the lens of self compassion.
Self compassion is very simple.
You might be able to do it on one breath.
Noticing the hurt.
Remembering you're not alone in the hurt.
Offering yourself some kindness.
The same kindness that you would extend to a beloved.
So the first part of that is allowing [00:10:00] yourself to feel the feeling.
No matter what it is.
When we avoid those big feelings or those uncomfortable feelings, that's where the tension starts to creep in. Because it takes a lot of effort to avoid those feelings.
So the first step of self compassion is really the hardest. Letting ourselves feel it. Then we can lean into the knowledge that we're not alone. Others feel this too.
And when we know others feel this, that spontaneous desire to lift suffering comes up.
Then we can turn that desire to lift suffering towards ourselves.[00:11:00]
Once we have practiced self compassion, it is so much easier to see the other as also suffering, also worthy of happiness,
and to have a desire to lift their suffering,
even if the way to lift their suffering is by educating them. Opening up their world and inviting them to see your vision of a more inclusive future.