Your Holiday Survival Guide
What to read if you’re hiding in the bathroom
Thanksgiving
If you need to gear up for family gatherings, a few perspectives for your preparation:
When reentry is rocky (shoutout to the Boston Pilot for including an audio version for increased accessibility).
3 pieces of wisdom that can change how you approach family reunions: “It’s not about you. You have to expend energy. Meet people at their level.”
Advent
We’ll have plenty of essays and prayers coming your way at Mothering Spirit, including easy (free!) Advent ideas for families each Friday. But check these out today: my favorite Advent/Christmas books for kids. If you request these titles now from the library, you can enjoy all December long.
If you’re looking for Advent & Christmas reads for yourself or others, you can get my Emmanuel book (a gorgeous coffee table book on the names of Jesus) on super sale here (only $18!) or bundled with this year’s Blessed Is She Advent devotional here.
Check out Cameron Bellm’s free Advent devotional on St. Óscar Romero from her Substack newsletter.
New Books
I was honored to have my story included in my dear friend Ellie Roscher’s new book The Embodied Path: Telling the Story of Your Body for Healing and Wholeness. Lately I’m loving Ellie’s “body breaks” on Instagram, to get up and stretch in the middle of your day. This is a woman who knows bodies and the stories they hold, and helps us tend them with wisdom and grace.
Leonard DeLorenzo just published a brand-new book on heaven that brought me to tears when I learned that he shared our daughters’ story within its pages: Our Faithful Departed: Where They Are and Why It Matters.
When you need to escape this week
Simcha Fischer on real and hopeful—albeit small—ways that the world is getting kinder. Co-sign that Buy Nothing groups are the best thing on Facebook.
Two poems from Annie Lighthart: “A Great Wild Goodness” with its call to ordinary compassion and “Let This Day” for when you need to turn a day around.
Katie McGrady’s Like A Mother podcast has accompanied me through heaps of laundry. Also grateful for this Coffee+Crumbs episode with Aundi Kolber: Motherhood + Trauma.
I loved this Atlantic article on the made-up songs parents sing to babies and how much our original lullabies matter: for language and love, for brains and bonding, for parent and child.
Translating Fr. Sorin’s letters from French sounds delightfully nerdy, n’est-ce pas?
A gorgeous and true essay on grief and friendship and the parts of us that we leave behind in each other.
Finally, may God’s Infinite Mercy embrace every one of us, even when we are still a long way off. Even that one person at your holiday table that you cannot stand, yes, even them.
This post contains affiliate links. Photo by Avi Waxman on Unsplash.