Choice & “the holidays”
The traditional “holiday season” is always an invitation to reflect on our stories.
It is an opportunity to bring healing and perspective to those stories that no longer serve us. To write new chapters in deeper alignment with our hearts and values. And to bring a greater sense of choice and accountability to the practices, traditions and relationships of our lives.
As I look around at the Christmas tree, nativity set, and advent wreath in my home, I am reminded of the stories of my life that this season has represented.
As a little girl in a Mexican and Catholic home, there was no room for any story other than one of Christmas, joy, hope and presents during the month of December. In many ways, it was the one time of year that I felt hopeful that good things were for me. The Christmas season was one the few times I remember thinking my mother was happy, and like I was a part of something special.
Later came the years of adolescence. This is when my childhood yearning for a season magical enough to make me forget the void that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, manifested itself in a love of Christmas decorations, parties, nostalgic music, hopes for holiday romance and New Years Eve kisses.
And then, when I was 21 years old, living in a rural village in Paraguay (I was there for two years), I finally had the space to question many of the beliefs and traditions I had always taken as a given. Among these, the Catholic faith I had been raised with. I was ready to admit that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make sense of belonging to an institution that was so far from how I believed we should actually treat each other as human beings...and all beings for that matter. I resented the guilt and conditioning that I had acquired over the years in the church. I questioned the supremacy stories of the United States culture I grew up in. I questioned the “bootstraps” narrative I had stamped on my parent’s rich and painful stories of loss and immigration. I was questioning what seemed like everything at the time.
This is where a years-long exploration of alternatives to the traditions and beliefs I had been raised with began. Including those Christmas traditions I had so grasped onto throughout my early and adolescent childhood years. I was changing. Growing in so many ways.
And yet, even as I learned a lot and my eyes were opened to new, often heartbreaking truths, from voices and teachings, old and new….
During these years, this information that liberated me from the single narrative of my childhood, did not actually, well, liberate me. Because I did not feel free.
I was unknowingly tied in so many ways to a lifetime of unconscious patterns of black and white thinking. A zero sum game where embracing one story meant exiling another. My identity would be defined by my ideology, which is confining, even when that ideology speaks of freedom.
Without knowing it, I had chained myself to a story of resistance to the “old” stories I had grown up with. I was ashamed of what I had thought and believed in the past, and simply wanted to put that part of my story behind me.
Entirely unable to see the very human reasons why I had needed those stories and strategies to survive a childhood lacking in sufficient familial and community connection–I superimposed the dogmatic nature with which I was taught religion, onto my newfound beliefs.
I had no idea back then that in order to free myself, I actually needed to see, know and heal the parts of me that had taken those stories on as a means of survival from such an early age.
And because I didn't feel free to heal myself, my ability to see my full humanity was blinded by perfectionism. Which certainly made it impossible to see, hold and respect the humanity of others. Especially those who continued to belong to the institutions, or ascribe to the values and beliefs, that I now considered to be wrong.
And so, even though I was “choosing” who to surround myself with, and which types of learning I was allowing into my life. I wasn’t actually practicing choice. I was still acting from a place of fear, remaining comfortable in the company of others whose views resembled my own. Those who were on the “right” side of things. Just as in the days of my Catholic childhood, I was with like-minded people, but I wasn’t actually in connected community.
Now, as I experience myself living into deeper freedom for myself, and committed to freedom and sovereignty for all of us; I believe that this has come to be, and will deepen and grow, through healing in connected community, and the practices of deep listening, compassion and accountability.
It is when we embody healing as a practice of liberation, that we can embrace the practice of true choice.
I once heard someone say that having a regulated nervous system can be described as feeling enough access to choice.
In other words, the more regulated our nervous system is, the more we are able to choose how we will show up for the events of our lives.
Which makes it more possible to show up in alignment with our truth, our values, and a sense of connectedness to ourselves and others; as opposed to doing things because we feel obligated, coerced, pressured, conditioned, or overpowered by automatic reactions, fears and biases.
One single action can have an entirely different meaning and impact on our relationships and world, depending on the intention behind it.
For example, the very same action of giving a gift, can have entirely different intentions beneath it, and in effect, a different impact on our experience of it. Just consider the difference between, “I am choosing to find a special gift for my friend because I want her to have something nice and know that I want that for her”, and, “this friend always gets me a gift so I need to find something for her.”
Or, the very same action of telling your child the truth about Santa. There is a difference between, “I am choosing to tell my child the truth about Santa because many aspects of the Santa tradition do no align with my values and even though it might be hard, it feels right, and I am prepared to provide support and guidance as they navigate holding a countercultural narrative out in the world”, and “I want to do the Santa tradition with my kids but I keep thinking about that social media post by a gentle parent coach saying its wrong and I feel ashamed so I am just going to tell them the truth.”
So, what does all of this have to do with “the holidays” as an opportunity to reflect on the stories that got us here, the ones that narrate our present, and the ones our hearts are wanting to write in the next chapter?
I can tell you that I never would have imagined years ago, that I would want to have such traditionally Christian artifacts present in my home, and as a part of my daughter’s upbringing.
But healing always reminds me that there is enough space for so much more than we were previously allowed to make room for. In my case, this looks like...
The teachings of the Christian tradition, removed from the imposed narratives of the church and empires that used it as a tool of oppression, conquest and domination,
Recognition and grief for how these teachings were, and continue to be, twisted to serve agendas of greed and justify violence and genocide,
A reclaiming of the original and mystical teachings, that so align with other wisdom traditions from around the world, including those of the indigenous cultures that were oppressed in the name of supposed Christianity,
A healing of the younger versions of myself that were harmed by dogmatic thinking, with an invitation to receive teachings of love, nonviolence and compassion, without a single requirement or condition (including having to choose one, “right” belief system),
The learning of other traditions that are practiced during this time of year, that shows me how very universal the teachings wholeness, interconnectedness and interdependence with all living things really are,
Creating ritual around reflection and time with the community of friendship and support that I belong to here,
A continuous invitation to my child to bring her own curiosity and ideas to this season of rest, darkness and awaiting renewal.
Living outside of the United States for the past 20 years, 18 of them in southern Mexico, I have had a bit of an advantage in being able to reinvent my holiday experience. When I decided to abstain from the traditional Thanksgiving holiday, it was not difficult to do in a country that does not celebrate it at all. Choosing the story that your holiday traditions will tell, is easier when you are not bombarded by a bright and merry marketing campaign designed to force you into consumerist submission. And when it comes to local dominant culture practices that do not feel aligned, it is pretty easy to opt in or out, without feeling the pressure to conform.
I acknowledge that my circumstance has afforded my certain privilege regarding the ease with which I have chosen to not only experience “the holidays”, but live into my values all year round.
At the same time, I know that healing is the real root of our ability to choose the stories that we will write.
And in this particular holiday season, we are not only called to examine the maturation and deepening of our values and beliefs around dominant holiday narratives and traditions, but we are also being called to face the present-day reminders that the old stories of human history that we want to leave behind are alive and well today.
We are witnessing with unprecedented access to images and information, the brutal, mass killing of innocent humans in Palestine; and the killing and continued detainment of equally innocent hostages. We are seeing people tear each other down on social media and violently attacking each other on the streets. We see people focused more on disproving whether islamophobia or antisemitism actually exist, before holding compassion for those affected by either of these.
We are challenged to discover how we will write new stories of healing, freedom, and connection, in solidarity with each other.
This is a time to witness yourself, and allow yourself to grow. To rest. And to choose how you will show up every day. Making mistakes, and knowing that even the oldest teachings say that this is a part of it.
You get to keep trying.
Whether it is your commitment to breaking cycles of dominance in your parenting; or breaking out of the illusion of separateness from others (even your least favorite neighbor); or bringing more humanity, humility and courage to your activism, you get to keep trying.