Upcoming holidays challenging your mood?

Don't let the holidays get you down if you're a single woman. Get creative instead.

CLZúñiga

10/29/20212 min read

This is it. We're in the home stretch...sliding into holiday season.

If you're fairly recently on your own, the whole thing may feel daunting. In a few days we have Halloween. Around the corner from that we have Thanksgiving. Then Christmas, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Then Valentine's Day...

For single women over 35, these markers can stimulate loneliness, regret, self-doubt, depression or even fear. We reminisce about "the good times" when we had a partner to share these special days with, and the things we did with them. Maybe this included extended family members and friends that are also no longer a part of our lives.

Reflecting on it, we start to miss how it felt to be a part of something bigger than us. On top of that, we get bombarded with cultural messaging that suggests the only way to enjoy these special days is to share them with a partner or family. While doing that can be fulfilling, of course it's not the only way to enjoy ourselves over the holidays.

For single women, now is the time to make our plans. What will we do with our holiday time? What new tradition can we start for ourselves and/or with others in our life? What would we enjoy doing that we've never done before?

The thing is, when we have "free time," meaning time away from work to do as we wish, and we have no built in distractions or obligations to fill, we are free to get creative! Or we can mope around and let our mind kick into high gear slamming us with pathetic narratives of the past or future, none of which have any relevance to the now or to what happens next.

Our mind's narratives can easily send us into an emotional cyclone and before we know it, we're sobbing into our peas for no real reason. We get caught in memories of what was or fears of what may be...none of it real. What's real is that we are here, now, and free to do as we choose.

Instead of wasting our energy in mental-emotional cyclones, let's get creative and open our fun door. Let's play and enjoy the free time however we want. There are no rules to how we spend our free time, holidays or not. So we can spend it exactly as we want to, alone or with others as we wish. Let's not buy into the marketing manipulations targeted at getting us to purchase something. Instead, let's make up our own rules and have a great time!