As I’m sitting here eagerly waiting for the correct time to start taking down the Christmas decorations and having Christmas cookies for breakfast, something suddenly hit me this holiday; it kind of sucked. This year has not been easy. Every year as I get closer to the New Year, I have the obligatory thoughts about “What will be different?” and as 2024 approached, I remembered pondering some of the changes such as being more health conscious; drinking more water, actually using the gym membership that is directly withdrawn out of my bank account and maintaining better connections with friends and family. However, as 2025 is within a matter of hours, some of those goals didn’t even get looked at - in fact, some of the people that I meant to call I haven’t responded to texts, I didn’t make time to gather photos to send out to Vistaprint to create a holiday card and I haven’t made an appointment for an annual that was possibly due in August. So what happened?
I was driving a few weeks ago, (listening to a Podcast that wasn’t actually Dateline or True Crime) and the speaker shared a really interesting concept that prompted me to open up a document and put down some thoughts. Mind you, I’m terrified of blogging. As someone who has spent the last 24 years being a therapist, it’s almost probably surprising, but writing our true feelings about us is vulnerable - listening to everyone else’s isn’t so bad. You see, being a therapist isn’t just about listening, we process with you, we empathize with you and we also attempt to assist you to see what solutions and alternatives would be useful for the presenting situation. But what many people don’t realize is that we also have shitty days, we also have depression and sometimes we just plain have moments where we don’t follow through with the things that we should be like self-care, going to the gym and all of the other breathing exercises that we encourage you to do.
So, back to the podcast lady; she spoke about this concept that when things feel like they suck, we have to remember that there is “beauty in the pit”. At first, I imagined this dark deep hole like a huge hole in the back of my yard, but what I realized as I continued to listen to her, was that in
the “pit of life” there is a lot of suffering. This year, many of us have had financial issues, business decisions that have not gone well. Break-ups, lots of death and that’s just the surface. There have been many experiences that people have had that are truly unbearably indescribable and it’s made life sometimes feel that it’s too hard to bear. As a therapist, I have been present with individuals who have found it very hard to justify that life is actually worth continuing and no matter how many coping strategies or supports you have, the voice and the pressure of how difficult it is to put one foot in front of the other, or even consider that there is an option to take another breath is incredibly debilitating.
With the concept of the beauty in the pit, is not the false positivity that we see on social media and the fakeness of the comments and the statements that we are all used to telling individuals in our life such as “it’ll get better”, or “just give it some time”, “or you’ll find someone else, there are so many people out there”. In fact those statements make it worse. The beauty is realizing that the actual struggle sometimes allows us to see the beauty. The pain of knowing that our strength and resilience, which isn’t always evident, is there; it’s a small glimmer and it might not even be a glimmer or a light. The beauty is recognizing that even though we have not been able
to make the phone call or connected with a friend because we feel that they have shit too, or because we haven’t returned the many things that are in our trunk from Target, or we have mindlessly justified the purchases from Amazon that we don’t need - that the beauty is that we are trying. The beauty is our attempt at maybe getting out of bed just for an hour. The beauty is admitting that we feel like we suck as a parent, or maybe we haven’t cleaned out the fridge in awhile, or we are just simply walking through life right now because the fear of the world is too much and that’s completely alright. Sometimes beauty isn’t something that has to be obvious, but it has to be good enough for us. What I realized is that I thought too much into the analogy of the pit and focused more on the darkness more than the beauty. I feel like that sometimes we are so forced to be in this mindset that we are required to meet everyone’s expectations, but we don’t have to.
So for what it’s worth, and if you are finding yourself in a place where you are feeling that not getting Christmas cards out was a failure, or perhaps you have worked way too many hours this year and not spent enough time with your children, or not called that friend and solved their relationship problems- know that there is beauty in YOUR pit. Know that the beauty is that you are doing the best you can and that’s completely okay. Also, realize that no one is perfect and no one is keeping score and if they are, and you have people in your life that are, then set the boundaries that your therapist tells you about and remind yourself that boundaries are to protect you, not anyone else. Also, remind yourself that you are doing okay and whatever okay looks like, that’s just fine. No one needs to explain or know what your okay looks like.
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