All I want for Christmas...is for you to be your authentic self

Can I get some pigs in blankets with my social hangover, please?

I know just how easy it can be, particularly at this time of year, to throw caution to the wind and abandon our own wants and needs in favour of keeping family members or friends or colleagues content. As a chronic (but slowly recovering) people-pleaser, I recognise the pressure to keep the peace all too well - to manage everyone else’s emotional wellbeing and contentment, so that I feel safe. If everyone else is happy and taken care of, I can relax, too.

But if I could wish anything for you and for myself this Christmas, it would be to honour and show up for yourself. The real you. The one who perhaps doesn’t want to drink alcohol, or is trying to eat less meat, or just isn’t feeling that festive, actually. The one who needs to plan in pockets of time alone to recharge in-between impassioned games of Monopoly. The one who has had a really hard year and just wants to fester in pyjamas and watch Bridget Jones’s Diary over and over again for two weeks straight.

Whichever version of yourself shows up to Christmas lunch this year, I want you to be her unapologetically.

Christmas Day is, after all, just another day, preceded by 358 other very ordinary days, in which we are faced with myriad challenges and successes and joys. Sometimes, we just don’t have it in us to bring our most jolly selves to the Christmas table, when we’re still dealing with whatever came in the twelve months before.

The expectations that others hold over you are their burden to bear, not yours. We cannot be held responsible for matching up to an idealised version of ourselves that was crafted by somebody else, without a thought for what we actually want and need.

I hope that you can carve out time to be your most authentic self this Christmas. I hope you can find a few precious moments to do the things that make your heart sing. And if your heart is telling you that you just need to stop and be still - well, I hope you can find the self compassion within your soul to lean into rest, to breathe and recalibrate as a new year begins.

You are worthy of a Christmas that feels nourishing. You are worthy of saying no.

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Thank you as always for reading. I do hope this post resonates with you in some way (and if you’re a people-pleaser like me, I hope you can please yourself a little, too).

Lauren x