The Hidden Emotional Cost of the Holidays
December arrives dressed in twinkle lights and cinnamon spice.
Everyone smiles wider, every commercial screams joy, every invitation assumes you’re thrilled to participate.
And yet—quietly, beneath the garland and glitter—women are exhausted.
Not from wrapping paper or cookie trays.
From the invisible emotional work that the season demands.
Because the holidays aren’t just holidays.
They’re memory keepers.
They’re grief triggers.
They’re unhealed family systems sitting across the table in matching pajamas.
They’re traditions that ask women to show up fully even when their bodies are already stretched thin.
And underneath it all lives an emotional cost no ornament can hide.
🎁 The Silent Labor No One Talks About
Women don’t decorate the season.
They hold the season.
They hold:
the emotional temperature of the household
the nostalgia everyone expects to feel
the tension no one names but everyone senses
the logistics that magically “just happen”
While also holding their breath…
their shoulders…
their boundaries…
their grief.
December doesn’t tire women out because of tinsel.
It tires them out because they become the emotional architecture of every gathering.
🌫 Why the Body Feels It First
Before your mind admits the pressure,
your body does.
Jaw tightening during dinner planning
Shoulders lifting before conversations even begin
Breath shortening when old dynamics surface
Heart rate spiking at the phrase “family photos”
The nervous system remembers what the calendar pretends it forgot.
It knows last year’s emotional landmines.
It knows the role you’ve been expected to play.
It knows what it costs you to smile through discomfort.
You’re not dramatic.
You’re somatically informed.
🌙 The Holiday Myth Women Are Buried Under
We’ve been conditioned to believe:
“Make it magical for everyone else.”
Translation:
Carry the emotional labor quietly.
Don’t show fatigue.
Make peace, make cookies, make memories, make room, make space…
But don’t ask for space.
No wonder the body starts bracing by December 1st.
🍃 What If This Year Didn’t Have to Hurt?
What if softness counted too?
What if you didn’t perform joy—you let yourself feel what’s real?
What if the holidays could…
be slower
be quieter
make room for grief and laughter
allow space to step away, not show up
Joy wants to be embodied, not forced.
🕯 A Gentle Place to Start Softening
If the pressure has already started tightening in your jaw, breath, or chest, I made something for you:
✨ The Unclenched Workshop (free)
A nervous system exhale for women who are tired of pretending fine.
And if your body wants deeper relief:
✨ The Pressure Release Toolkit
3 days to drop your shoulders, unclench your jaw, and feel like yourself again.
Because you shouldn’t have to survive the season to participate in it.
You deserve to experience it.
Not as the holiday caretaker.
Not as the emotional handler.
Not as the one who carries the invisible load.
But as a human with needs, softness, and a nervous system that’s done holding everything alone.
Your body deserves ease.
Even now.
Especially now.
🤍