Coming Up for Air After the Holidays

It’s quiet again.

Not perfectly quiet, but the kind of quiet where your shoulders finally start to drop without you telling them to. The kind where you realize you’ve been holding your breath, and you don’t need to anymore.

That’s where I am right now.

Coming up for air after the holidays.

If you’re here too, I want you to know something first: you’re not late, you’re not behind, and you didn’t miss some magical moment you were supposed to feel. You’re just emerging. And that counts.

The Holidays Ask a Lot

The holidays come with expectations, spoken and unspoken. They ask for energy, presence, flexibility, joy, tolerance, togetherness. They assume we can all just… rise to the occasion.

But for many of us, especially those who are neurodivergent, sensitive, or carrying complicated family dynamics, the season isn’t festive, it’s demanding.

Too many inputs.
Too many emotions.
Too many memories layered on top of each other.

Even when nothing “bad” happens, it can still be a lot. And when things are difficult, when there’s tension, loss, old patterns, or emotional landmines, it can feel like running a marathon with no clear finish line.

So if you feel wrung out right now, that makes sense.

If You Barely Made It Through

I want to say this plainly, because it matters:

Barely making it through still means you made it through.

Some seasons aren’t about thriving. They’re about staying upright. About finding one solid thing to hold onto and letting that be enough.

For me, that solid thing was my work, something structured, steady, and familiar when everything else felt unpredictable. It gave my mind somewhere to land. It helped me keep moving forward when stopping would have been harder.

That doesn’t mean everything was easy.
It means I found a way to stay here.

If you did something similar, immersed yourself in a project, focused on routine, narrowed your world to what felt manageable, you didn’t fail at the holidays.

You protected yourself.

There’s No Rush to “Bounce Back”

Right now, there’s a lot of talk about fresh starts and new beginnings. About resetting, resolving, becoming better versions of ourselves overnight.

But here’s a quieter truth:

You don’t have to spring forward immediately.
You don’t have to explain your exhaustion.
You don’t have to turn survival into a lesson yet.

Sometimes the most honest thing you can do is rest where you are and let your nervous system catch up to the fact that the pressure has eased.

Coming up for air doesn’t mean swimming harder.
It means floating for a moment and trusting that it’s okay to pause.

If You’re Reading This…

If you’re reading this with a cup of coffee, or tea, or just a few quiet minutes to yourself, I’m glad you’re here.

You’re not alone in feeling this way.
You’re not weak for needing recovery time.
You’re not doing life wrong because the holidays took more out of you than you expected.

We’re on the other side now. The noise is fading. The calendar is turning. And slowly, gently, we can decide what comes next, without urgency, without pressure.

For now, it’s enough to breathe.

I’m here with you, coming up for air too.

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