Sanity and support at family holiday gatherings.
A roundup of some strategies that might be helpful going into the holiday season plus some wins worth celebrating this week.
Hey, folks! Last night, I hosted the first iteration of my annual home for the holidays event, which I’ve been running for a few years now. Since the holidays are right around the corner, and I know not everyone was able to attend the event, I thought I’d put together a recap of some of the best resources and strategies I’ve got.
Also, if you haven’t had a chance yet, don’t forget to check out the phenomenal interview I was able to be a part of with Aidan Wharton from Gay Buffet! To celebrate the interview’s release, we’re going to be going live this evening at 8pm EST! Should be a good time :)
You’ll find that these resources are broken into three categories: before, during, and after the event. Before we get into the meat of it, I wanted to start with a quick roundup of some of the things worth celebrating this week!
Good News from This Week!
Court Wins: A federal judge in Pennsylvania has formally blocked the Trump admin’s request for identifying patient data on minors receiving gender affirming care at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, marking a fantastic victory for trans kids and their families, as well as lovers of privacy and bodily autonomy everywhere!! (The Advocate, 11/24)
School Boards: We knew that we’d crushed it in school board elections around the country, but LGBTQ+ has started to compile just how fantastic the scale of those victories are–and how we’re preparing to make that tide even bigger next year. (LGBTQNation, 11/24)
Congress: Sarah McBride has introduced a bill titled the Global Respect Act, a bipartisan commission to make the United States once again into a leader in expanding safety and inclusion for LGBTQ+ people across the globe. While it likely won’t be signed into law by our current president, it’s amazing to be laying the groundwork now for a more effective bill and more efficient passage once the white house is reclaimed. Plus, just because Trump is in office doesn’t mean we aren’t allowed to keep dreaming of the world we want to build. We will outlive his hate!! (The Advocate, 11/20)
Congress (evil edition): Marjorie Taylor Greene is resigning effective January 5th! Known for peddling conspiracy theories, antisemitism, racism, and plenty of virulent transphobia, she left after her criticisms of Trump set her up for what she called a “hurtful and hateful primary”. She claims to regret spreading so much hate and division across the country, and whether or not that’s true remorse isn’t for me to say. What is for me to say is that it further shrinks the GOP’s margins in the house: once she leaves, they have wiggle room for only two republicans to vote outside of the party line before a bill fails. (FOX, 11/24)
It also doesn’t hurt that MTG stated in her resignation announcement video that she believed the GOP was going to lose massively at the midterms and Trump would be impeached. Girl, fingers crossed!!
Choosing Joy at the Holidays
A reminder: It is up to us to choose joy as no one else is going to do that for us. At family gatherings or during the holiday season, this can mean leaning into routines and rituals that bring us peace, or being extra mindful of our engagement with social media and the news.
For me, it continues to be incredibly helpful to describe my relationship to social media for what it truly is, an addiction, because it also gives me the language and the research to understand that travel, big gatherings, and the holiday season in general are known for being major triggers for all kinds of addictive behaviors. Choosing joy means choosing to set up a few extra guardrails to help myself prepare for some of those increased challenges.
Choosing joy also means recognizing that we are the narrators of our own realities, and we decide what story we want to tell ourselves. In life, you find whatever you choose to look for. If you tell yourself this is going to be a stressful, exclusive, argumentative family gathering filled with misgendering and inappropriate questions and microaggressions, I can pretty much guarantee you’re going to spend your time looking for, finding, and remembering those painful moments. But if you tell yourself that there are things you’re excited about or people you’re looking forward to seeing, that you’re excited to notice how many people make a genuine effort to learn your pronouns or who is the most surprising ally, you’re going to look for, and find, and remember those moments instead. Both moments will exist. The question is simply which moments you decide to give more weight.
Notably, if you are reading this and imagining that it’s simply not possible, that there are absolutely no redeeming qualities and no one who makes even an ounce of effort to see you or love you. Let me gently remind you that you don’t have to go to that. Or if you have to now, it won’t always be this way. Family is about love, not blood, and it’s okay to go for the shortest amount of time possible or set new boundaries or opt not to attend at all. You deserve to feel loved exactly as you are.
Before the Gathering:
Our guiding principle for the preparation for our gathering or event is this: Un-communicated expectations are premeditated resentment. (I read this phrase for the first time in a beautiful piece by
and it has haunted me every day since.)We want to do our level best to be as clear as possible about what our loved one expect from us and what we expect from others. If there’s a specific family member you’re hoping to support at an upcoming gathering, or if we want to receive a specific form of support, yourself, think through how you might talk about those needs with your loved ones.
Are there any things that you’re worried about that we can prevent or prepare for in advance?
Have you come out to everyone at this gathering?
If yes, do you want help correcting them with slip ups around language or pronouns?
If no, would you like any help sharing that information?
If they aren’t quite ready to come out yet, maybe you play undercover agents together. This is what my best friend and I used to do when we were closeted at different family gatherings.
Here’s an Instagram Reel I made with a campy admission briefing.
We also want to set our threshold for what we are and are not willing to accept. It’s helpful to have those lines preset both so you can communicate them to others and so that you go into the gathering already knowing where your exits are.
Especially if this is a gathering for Thanksgiving, we don’t exactly have a ton of time left on the clock to request a family member go through a radical philosophy shift. So when we call to communicate our concerns or expectations, we can be explicitly clear on what behaviors we would like to see more or less of and where our boundaries are.
“It would really mean a lot if you could help me correct other people about using John’s new pronouns”
“if you put Fox News on the television, We’re going to need to take some space.”
It helps wherever possible to deputize people and make them feel like they’re on your team helping support your loved one rather than being asked to perform for a grade. Think things like, “can you help me correct others on pronouns?” Certainly implies I want you to work on getting it right, but it’s much more energizing to be wanted on the team than it is to be told you’re the opposition.
The last thing we wanna prepare in advance is a sort of emotional first aid kit. This is the origins of the support menu I’ve written about a few times now, and you can read more about that idea in full here if you’d like.
But the gist of it is essentially that either for yourself or a partner or a family member, you prepare in advance a list of things that help you feel better when you’re stressed or overwhelmed or frustrated or disregulated. Only listing options that are genuinely feasible so that in the moment that something happens or things get tense or someone gets pushed too far, rather than asking what do you think you need right now? we can open up the list and pick out one or two things that are worth a try.
Lastly, don’t forget to center joy in your prep time. If you spend the whole lead up thinking only of what might go wrong and what you’re worried about, you’re going to be mired in anxiety that will absolutely follow you to the event. So we also want to ask ourselves and our loved ones to come up with a list of five things we’re looking forward to and to include excitement list making when we spend time discussing the gathering.
During the Gathering
Now how about during the gathering? How do you respond after the two hundredth pronoun correction or the blow up fight over mashed potatoes? How do we limit harm, diffuse tension, and dare I say it, make room for growth?
In the moment, based on what kind of comment is being made and the size of the group we’re in, we can utilize either a call in or a call out.
A call out is an interruption. A way for further harm to be prevented. Example: Loudly changing the topic with pointed eye contact or saying, “I need you to stop. This isn’t how family treats each other.”
A call in is better served one on one, usually after the fact of the inciting incident. And is focused on helping the offending individual grow from their mistake. Call ins focus on asking questions and clarifying intent while emphasizing the impact.
When I listen deeply, I’m often looking for three things: windows, mirrors, and doors.
Windows are opportunities for me to genuinely understand what’s going on with the person sitting across from me? In short, answering the question, why are you like this? Who hurt you? What misinformation have they heard? What baggage do they carry?
Mirrors are the spots where we see our own values reflected back even if our executions differ wildly. I wanna look for and verbally highlight these. It seems like we both really want our loved one to be happy. We both care a lot about fairness for female athletes.
Doors are spaces where we might be able to introduce a new resource or share a poignant story or statistic or invite them to live their values in a new way. I’m going to a women’s sports bar next week to support a fundraiser for equal funding for girls sports teams. Do you wanna come? Or, I know you want the best for our loved one, and you want him to know how much you love him. But right now, he’s afraid to see you. Could I suggest some strategies for things that might help him know how much you love him?
When we offer people the ability to change their minds or change their behaviors while also protecting their egos, they’re so much more likely to be willing to walk with us. In the study of persuasion, we call this the golden gates of retreat.
After the Gathering
Whether the gathering is actually over or you’ve just retreated back behind a closed door for the evening, it’s important to have strategies in place to help us come back to a place of peace. One of my favorites here I like to call Newton’s third law of emotion. Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
In this third law of emotion, I say that for every challenging feeling, we want to find something we can do to directly counteract that.
If you’re feeling isolated, how can you plan out (perhaps in advance so you can spend the time looking forward to it) FaceTimes with loved ones, or group gatherings upon your return with people who make you feel loved as you are?
If you’re feeling feeling pent up or unable to express your frustration, consider going to a rage room or axe throwing or for a run. What would help you connect to empowerment?
If you’re feeling invisible inside gendered family traditions, how can you plan new traditions either during or after your gatherings that make you feel celebrated?
If you have other strategies of things that help you stay emotionally regulated or come back to a place of calm after gatherings, I’d love to hear more about it. Feel free to share in the comments so that we can all have some new strategies for resting and recharging during these times.
That’s all that’s fit to print for now. I’m endlessly grateful for you all, and I’ll see you on the other side.
<3 Ben