The Gift You Deserve

The cookies will be lopsided. The house won’t be ready for Martha Stewart. The conversation WILL get awkward. Someone will definitely be late, or early, or will bring the wrong thing.

But the mess is where the joy lives.

Perfect holidays exist in magazines and Instagram feeds—places where nobody actually lives. Real joy shows up in burnt edges and last-minute substitutions and the story you'll tell for years about the thing that went sideways.

If you've spent hours planning, arranging, coordinating, perfecting, it can be hard to let go. But what if you did?

What if, in these final days, you let the imperfect thing be enough? Let the people be themselves. Let it be messy. Let it be real. Let it be joyful precisely because you stopped trying to make it perfect.

Let yourself breathe—because you deserve it.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS from my family to yours!