Hope That Isn’t Naive

One of the most quoted lines in the song is:
“Maybe this year will be better than the last.”

It’s a simple sentence, but it carries the weight of every disappointment, every missed attempt at repair, every moment we told ourselves “I’ll handle it later” and later never came.

This isn’t the shiny, Instagram-quote kind of hope.
It’s the quiet, weathered kind… the hope that remains after regret, shame, or relational distance.
Hope that knows what it costs to hope again.

This is the kind of hope that heals.
Not the kind that avoids the truth, but the kind that walks directly into it.

Real hope sounds like:

• I can name the hard things honestly.

• I can take responsibility without drowning in shame.

• I can grieve what didn’t unfold the way I meant it to.

• I can still believe change is possible in small, real ways.

Hope and honesty are not opposites.
They depend on each other.

As you move deeper into December, you might ask:

• What am I ready to hope for with clear eyes?

• What gentle shift feels possible, not drastic, but meaningful?

Hope doesn’t require certainty.
Just courage.

The Ways Relationships Drift Through Long Seasons

Another lyric from the song says:
“I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower about the things you couldn’t show her.”

In relationships, emotional winter rarely arrives overnight.
It’s gradual… a slow cooling, a soft pulling away, a long season of protecting ourselves because something feels fragile or uncertain.

By December, many couples finally notice:

• We’re talking around things instead of about them.

• We’re apologizing quickly but not repairing fully.

• We’re afraid to be vulnerable because we don’t know how it will land.

• We’re holding shame, hurt, or resentment we don’t know how to name.

The winter metaphor is powerful because it reflects a truth:
We often hide the parts of ourselves we fear will disappoint, overwhelm, or burden the person we love.

If you’re feeling some emotional winter in your relationship, consider:

• Where have I gone quiet out of fear, not indifference?

• What truth have I been carrying alone because it felt too tender?

• What small gesture of warmth could help us thaw the distance?

Winter is part of every relationship.
So is the possibility of spring.

Repair doesn’t require perfection just honesty, softness, and willingness.

Grief, Memory, and the Things We Carry into December

There’s a line in the song that goes:
“And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters but no pearls.”

If the holidays stir something tender, complicated, or heavy in you, you’re not alone.

This season often magnifies grief, not just the grief of people we’ve lost, but the grief of years that didn’t go the way we hoped, relationships we struggled to repair, mistakes we regret, or versions of ourselves we miss. Even joy can feel layered, like it has shadows around the edges.

Nostalgia mixes with loss.
Gratitude mixes with exhaustion.
Hope mixes with the fear that maybe we won’t change the patterns we meant to change.

One of the most healing things you can offer yourself is permission to feel everything without rushing it toward resolution.

You don’t need to “fix” grief.
You don’t need to force joy.
You don’t need to pretend the year didn’t bruise you in ways that still sting.

Instead, consider:

• What memory is resurfacing because it wants gentleness?

• What regret or shame is asking to be acknowledged, not judged?

• What part of you needs compassion rather than pressure?

If this month feels tender, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
It means you’re being honest.

The Long December We Carry Inside Us

There’s a line in the Counting Crows song A Long December that always hits a little harder this time of year:
“And it’s been a long December…”

Most of us feel that in our bones.

December has a way of collecting everything we didn’t know we were still carrying, the shame we didn’t have words for, the regret we quietly tucked away, the distance we noticed but didn’t know how to close. The unfinished conversations. The arguments we meant to repair but didn’t. The ways we slowly drifted from ourselves or each other.

When couples come into therapy this time of year, they often describe not one big rupture but a hundred subtle ones. No single moment caused the drift, it was the slow accumulation of unspoken feelings, swallowed needs, and the fear that bringing things up might make them worse.

If December is feeling “long” for you, maybe it’s not actually December.
Maybe it’s the emotional backlog, the things that hurt quietly.

The good news?
Awareness is the doorway to repair, not a punishment for falling short.

As you look toward the end of the year, consider gently asking yourself:

• What have I avoided naming because I didn’t want to be a burden?

• Where do I need repair or reconnection, with myself or someone I love?

• What part of me feels tired, guilty, or unseen?

You’re allowed to pause.
You’re allowed to tell the truth.
You’re allowed to begin again.

Why This Song Still Finds Me Every December

I was listening to A Long December the other day while I was working, and something in it stopped me for a moment. It wasn’t dramatic, just that familiar pull the song seems to have this time of year. There’s an emotional truth inside it that finds me every December, no matter how many years pass.

It’s not just nostalgia.
It’s not just the season.
It’s the way this song manages to hold so many human experiences at once:
the ache of distance, the sting of regret, the weight of another long year, and the quiet, almost reluctant hope that things can shift.

Every time I hear it, I’m reminded of the emotional landscapes we carry, the parts of us that feel worn down, the moments we wish we could redo, the shame or guilt we tuck away, the relationships where distance grew in the spaces we weren’t paying attention to. And also the longing… for reconnection, for softness, for something warmer than what we’ve been living in.

So this December, I wanted to spend a little time with the themes the song brings up for me, not to dissect it, but to sit with the emotional honesty it invites. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing short reflections on some of these themes: the accumulation of the year, the grief that resurfaces in winter, the drift that happens inside relationships, the quiet hope that refuses to disappear, and the seasonal cycles we move through as humans.

If you read one post or all of them, my hope is that something in this series helps you pause, breathe, and reflect on your own story from this past year. Not with pressure, and not with judgment, but with the kind of gentle honesty this song seems to call out in all of us.

Sometimes we need a moment of reflection.
Sometimes we need a song.
And sometimes we need a reminder that it’s okay to begin again.

Surviving the Holidays When You’re Already Running Low

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that shows up this time of year.
Not the kind that sleep fixes.
The kind that comes from months of carrying responsibilities, emotions, deadlines, and relationships that needed more of you than you actually had to give.

Then the holidays arrive with their pressure and pace and expectations.
Gatherings. Traditions. Decisions. Family dynamics.
And suddenly you are supposed to be available, cheerful, flexible, grateful, and present.

But what if you are already tired.
What if you are entering the season already stretched thin.

This blog is for the people who look at the calendar and feel a mixture of dread and guilt.
The people who want to show up for their families but also feel a deep internal tug toward rest.
The people who have been holding their breath for months and feel something inside whispering that they cannot keep going the way they have been.

Let’s talk about what it feels like to enter the holidays when your energy is already low and your nervous system is tired.

1. Your body often knows before your mind admits it

When someone is running low, their body usually gives the first signs.

You might feel heavier in the mornings.
You might lose patience more quickly.
You might feel less resilient to things that usually roll off your back.
You might feel disconnected from yourself or like everything takes more effort than it should.

These are not flaws.
These are signals.
Your system is telling you it needs something different.

2. Choosing to adjust your expectations

Holiday culture builds a lot of pressure.
There is an unspoken message that says you should be everywhere, do everything, see everyone, and say yes to every request.

But if you are already running low, you do not need a bigger load.
You need permission to lower the bar.

You can decide which events matter and which ones you can skip.
You can show up differently than past years.
You can choose a smaller version of connection if a bigger version costs too much.

You are not disappointing anyone by choosing what is humanly possible for you.

3. Rest is relational, not selfish

It is easy to think that taking time for yourself is stealing time from others.
But the truth is that the people in your life benefit when you pause.
Your presence becomes steadier.
Your reactions soften.
Your emotional availability improves.

Rest is not withdrawal.
It is repair.

Your nervous system cannot run on empty and still stay open to connection.
Rest makes you more reachable.

4. You can set boundaries that protect your energy without creating distance

One of the most important skills during a low season is communicating gently and clearly.

You can say
“I care about you, and I am also feeling stretched thin. I may need some time alone here and there so I can stay grounded and show up in a way that feels real.”
or
“I am feeling stretched thin and doing this would push me past what I can handle right now.”

Boundaries do not mean you are shutting people out.
They mean you are staying connected in a way that is sustainable.

Healthy connection requires honesty.
People who care about you will want you to take the space you need.

5. Small moments of regulation can carry you through high demand seasons

When you cannot change the demands around you, small grounding practices can make a real difference.

A slow breath before you walk into a gathering.
A moment alone in the bathroom to unclench your jaw.
Five minutes in the car before going into a house.
A brief step outside to feel your feet on the ground.
A quiet check-in with yourself before saying yes.

These tiny pauses help your nervous system stay online so you do not slip into old patterns of reactivity or self abandonment.

They are not dramatic.
They are effective.

6. You are not failing if the holidays feel hard

A tired body and an overextended nervous system do not understand that it is December.
Your system responds to what it has lived through and what it still carries.

There is no shame in feeling low right now.
There is no shame in needing a softer holiday.
There is no shame in moving slower than you wish you could.

You are doing the best you can within the emotional and physical limits of a real human being.

A Benediction for the Tired

May this season meet you gently.
May you find ways to do less without feeling less.
May rest come in small but meaningful places.
May you feel supported in ways that soften the load.
And may you stay connected to the people who remind you who you truly are, even when you are running low.

The Illusion of Fireworks: A MFT's Take on the Meaning of Independence

There’s a strange hollowness that can accompany holidays, especially the ones draped in symbols of triumph.

Every year on July 4th, we gather under exploding skies to celebrate our country’s independence. The rituals are familiar: red-white-and-blue paper plates, the smoky scent of barbecue, kids with sparklers, adults with beer. And, of course, the fireworks.

But what are we really celebrating?

From my perspective, the word “independence” doesn’t signal freedom in the way we often think. It’s not the clean severance, the heroic autonomy, the myth of the self-made individual. It’s something murkier. More painful. More intimate. And perhaps less celebratory than we’d like to admit.

Because real independence doesn’t come in a burst of light. It comes slowly, and with grief.

The Myth of Self-Mastery

Many of us are taught from a young age that independence is the goal. To not need, to not rely, to not feel beholden. We internalize the idea that the stronger I am, the less I need you. That to be free is to be disentangled. So we become high-functioning, high-achieving, self-contained… independent.

But in the therapy room, we often find that this “independence” is actually a defense, a shield against longing, vulnerability, dependency. Behind the self-sufficiency is often an ache. A child who learned that their needs were too much. A teen who couldn’t afford to rebel without losing safety. An adult who keeps everything and everyone together, all the while wondering why they feel so alone.

Dependence Is Not the Enemy

I want to invite us to reimagine dependence not as weakness, but as a necessary condition for growth. We never stop needing others, not as infants, not as adults. What changes is the way we relate to our need.

In therapy, independence is not an endpoint. It’s a process of differentiation that happens in the context of deep relationship. Not “I don’t need you,” but “I can be me while staying in connection with you.” That is a far more complicated kind of freedom. One that requires us to feel our dependency, to tolerate the anxiety of being known, to risk that our autonomy will not cost us love.

It is excruciating. And it is worth everything.

Legacy and Lineage

Then there’s the collective unconscious, the inherited emotional history we carry, especially in this country. Our national origin story is one of rebellion, conquest, and independence. But also one of disavowed trauma like colonization, genocide, slavery, and silenced grief. There is no true independence without reckoning. Without acknowledging who paid the price for our freedom.

For many clients, especially those from marginalized communities, July 4th doesn’t feel like a celebration. It feels like a rupture. A reminder of who was never invited into the dream. Therapy often becomes a space where people begin to untangle these intergenerational legacies, what it means to be “free” in a system that was never built for you. Or to carry the burden of ancestral survival while also trying to find space to rest, to soften, to become.

The Fireworks Inside

So maybe the question is not whether we feel proud or patriotic. Maybe the better question is: Where am I still trying to become free?

What internal colonizers still rule my psyche? What parts of me have been silenced, enslaved, exiled? Where have I declared independence prematurely, cutting off connection, numbing emotion, dissociating from need, in the name of “strength”?

And what would it mean, truly, to come home to myself?

Because sometimes, the path to freedom is not a declaration. It’s a quiet, painstaking journey back to the parts of us we left behind in order to survive.

This Independence Day, if the fireworks feel too loud, too bright, too performative, that’s okay. You’re not ungrateful. You might just be in touch with a deeper truth, that real liberation is internal. Slow. Messy. Full of contradiction. And absolutely worth the fight.

Even if no one’s watching.

Even if there are no fireworks.

The "SHOULDS" of Christmas: holiday expectations and stress

Christmas is the time of year where we are to be jolly, generous, and grateful. And yet, often times the holiday "shoulds" can carry stress and expectations that can leave us feeling guilty, irritable, depressed, or anything but happy. If you find yourself saying or thinking "I should..," this holiday season, here is a short article by Dr. Susan Noonan that may help. 

Dustin Shultz, LMFT. I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, speaker, and adjunct faculty at Azusahttps://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/view-the-mist/201611/holiday-expectations-and-stress Pacific University. I have experience working with teens, men, women, and couples, and have had success with people who are experiencing depression, anxiety, trauma, sexuality, divorce, affairs, cutting, grief, shame, stress, and life transitions. I help people live more authentically and embrace life.