Vol. 20, Issue 10,  Dec. 22, 2022

Pressure. I’m feeling the pressure. Having just gotten past December birthday celebrations, including mine, I always get a late start into Christmas preparations. Got the packages mailed (at great expense), but there’s still some local shopping to do. Two dinners to host before Christmas, and whatever I need to prepare to bring to my brother’s house for Christmas dinner.

So, today, I find speaker Kim Becking’s advice especially welcome. So I’m sharing the following article that she wrote in full — “You Are Allowed: Give Yourself Grace and Permission to Feel What You Need to Feel.” I hope you find a bit of grace in it as well.

You Are Allowed: Give Yourself Grace and Permission to Feel What You Need to Feel

by Kim Becking

The holiday season comes with so many reasons to be grateful, from spending time with your loved ones to celebrating the holly-jolly festivities. It’s also, however, a time of year where stress and overwhelm often find us, especially after the last few years of constant stress, uncertainty, change and heaviness.

Learning to give ourselves the grace and permission to feel what we need to feel during this stressful time is an important lesson we can take with us throughout the year and is especially helpful during the holidays. The past few years has brought all of us a level of change, uncertainty, overwhelm and stress like we’ve never seen before. We are on an emotional rollercoaster not sure if we will make it up the next hill or go off the tracks.

A key to boosting your resilience and flipping the script on stress during this time is to feel what you need to feel.  Emotions are complex. We are complex. And it’s so important, now more than ever, to have self-awareness and be in touch with your emotions.

To acknowledge and name your emotions and give yourself permission to feel what you need to without guilt, without shame, without judgment, without labeling an emotion good or bad. To make the time to pause, reflect and feel. To sit with those emotions and own them, not bury or hide them. To be willing to be honest with yourself and to be vulnerable – that’s where your real power is. To go through the hard, not around it. This is what will allow you to boost your resilience and come out of your challenges, change, and hard times stronger and better than before.

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO FEEL IT ALL

It’s been over 20 years since I first heard those words -– “You have breast cancer.” You think it can’t happen to you. You say I’m 30, I’m healthy, and I have no family history. Life was going according to plan –- but all of that changed with those four simple words. One week I’m planning my son Brandon’s two-year old birthday party and the next week I’m starting my first round of chemotherapy. After aggressive chemotherapy, a mastectomy with breast reconstruction, several other minor surgeries, and treatment for lymphedema, twenty years later, I am cancer free.

The best advice I ever got was from my friend Patti, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the young age of 24. Unfortunately, Patti lost her battle with breast cancer in 2003 at the age of 29. But Patti’s wisdom and legacy lives on, in her own words, in our book Nordie’s at Noon.

Patti gave me a two-sided handwritten card as soon as I was diagnosed. Twenty years later, and I still have that card in my desk and pull it out when I need to remind myself that I AM ALLOWED . . . I have used this card as a part of my resilience toolkit for the last 20 years during stressful and hard times. I have also handed out thousands of copies to others over the years.

Here was Patti’s advice to me as I started my breast cancer journey, and now my advice to you (with a few additions that I have added over the years), as you are navigating your own hard times.

Please remember you are allowed to feel whatever it is you need to feel. Give yourself permission. You may start out on one side of the card and minutes later, you’re on the other side. You may be on both sides of the card at the same time – that’s where I’ve found myself a lot lately as someone in the sandwich with aging parents and teenagers and both a mom and husband who had cancer this past year.  I sit in a state of exhausted gratitude feeling it all. We can feel grateful and sad at the same time. Or grateful and (insert feeling here). Our feelings are not mutually exclusive. It’s Ok. It’s more than OK – it’s necessary to your mental and emotional health to feel it all. To cry and also laugh, to feel exhausted and also feel grateful.  Wherever you are, just remember that YOU ARE ALLOWED.

Click here to download of the “You Are Allowed” card just for you. [Ed note: The version you download will be clearer than the one you see here on this page.]

Print it out.  Keep it handy when you need it.

Give yourself the grace and permission to FEEL what you need to and be where you need to be. This is what will allow you to boost your resilience during times of uncertainty, change and adversity.

And try to understand where others may be on the card as well. Give those around you the grace and space to feel what they need to feel – without judgement – because they may be on the opposite side of the card.

Here’s to you feeling what you need to feel today and soaking up all that is good!

About Kim Becking:  Kim Becking is an engaging, high-energy, fun, and impactful international keynote speaker, change and resilience expert, consultant, and award-winning author who empowers and inspires leaders, teams, and organizations to build a Momentum Mindset® so they can be more adaptable, resilient, and ready for what’s next in this rapidly changing world. To see how she could inspire the people around you, watch a preview video and learn more about Kim at our website by clicking here or give me a call at 503-699-5031.

Grace Under Pressure
– Kneading the Dough

While the results are cherished and anticipated, holiday baking and preparations sometimes feel like a chore, especially when I get myself under time pressure. Every year I make Norwegian Christmas Bread — it’s a yeast bread loaded with candied fruit. I am not a fruitcake person (my husband is), but this is different because it’s a bread. It’s delicious toasted.

It takes all day to make because it goes through a couple of punch-downs and risings. The recipe makes 3 loaves. The chore, however, is the 5 minutes of kneading and getting all the candied fruit to stick to the dough in the first round. It takes some muscle.

This year, however, as I kneaded, I consciously chose to think of my mother and grandmother and of all the years they made this recipe before me in the same large yellow bowl that I was using. The recipe card has all their notes along with the ingredients.

I remember how my Mom’s first attempt resulted in something more akin to brick loaves. She was chagrined but she persevered and tried again. A family tradition is a family tradition and must be honored! As I kneaded that dough, I felt a very strong connection to my Mom and my grandmother — Grandma Grace. Isn’t that appropriate for this article on giving yourself grace . . .

I hope your holidays are filled with all the people, experiences, and delights that bring you joy and peace. Until next time, give yourself some grace and please take care of yourself for your well being and those you love.

Yours truly,

Barbara

 

 

 

 

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