December 2024
...and focusing on rest + recovery.
Hi friend,
I hope this finds you feeling a sense of deep peace on this Sunday before the holiday break. My family and I are headed to my husband’s family’s house for Thanksgiving Christmas. (For context, I started this newsletter in October, returned to it twice in November, including on our drive to visit them for Thanksgiving, and am committed to sending it out by the end of the evening — please forgive any imperfections.)
Beside us on the drive, there’s a field of cows grazing across these gorgeous hills of green on a private ranch. The temps are holding ~60ºF in Texas. It’s sunny with some overcast. And the kids have been quietly reading for the past hour in our car after a last-week-before-the-holiday-break whirlwind.
Today’s also the first day after winter solstice, marking the first day of winter and the darkest day of the year. Today we begin to see a tiny bit more light than what we saw yesterday, and will begin to see more and more light in the days ahead.
Thank goodness.
The last few months have been, well, a lot. And for a lot of reasons. My nervous system is tired, and I’ve been doing my humble best to honor my body/mind/soul in ways I would have historically avoided in order to keep going, to get it all done —glorifying busy to keep up with a surrounding (and internalized) pace, while choosing to complete tasks over rest and recovery. Instead, I’m moving against my own decades-deep behavioral patterns to offer my body + being some degree of bandwidth to rest, recover, and heal. The last several months have included a ton of travel, some loved ones’ health challenges, deadlines, celebrations, kids’ activities, and ways of serving others — chapters along the journey that I’m always trying to remain present to, understand, and appreciate.
Part of my need to be quieter across online spaces is this innate desire to listen more intently, curiously, and with compassion. Lately, the voices I’ve been turning my ear and energy toward include poets, creatives, mystics, and most of all, my husband and our children…in a much deeper way than before. These voices remind me to return to the present moment, to the beauty that’s around me, the strength within me, and the love holding it all together. And while I’ve listened to outer voices, I’ve put in even more careful effort to silence the outer noises and return to listening to the still, small voice within, too.
The last few months — well, more accurately, the last year or so — has left my soul searching for deep rest beneath a weighted blanket of quiet and stillness after so many years of loud and busy. My work as a professor is so fulfilling in all that I get to do. At the same time, it has been quite full, keeping me busy between teaching, wrapping up a 3-year $5M grant as a co-principal investigator, supervising PhD students and mentoring MSW students, traveling to speak all around the country, and serving in my administrative role to support others’ research as well as through various forms of professional service.
As my kids have grown, the presence they’ve needed from me has felt much more delicate and nuanced, simultaneously requiring me to learn as I go in ways that feel… tender. complex. urgent. weighty. healing. (…especially as my body remembers some of the trauma I was experiencing at their ages, trying to stay with my inner child, too.)
Within my being holds a profound depth of remembering my own past, being present to this moment and to my loved ones (and their needs), while trying to prevent anxiety from taking over the control panel as I think about what’s ahead. (Transparently, I still cannot NOT cry during the scene in Inside Out 2 when Anxiety takes over. Even thinking about it now feels like a punch to my chest — for those of us who struggle with anxiety, Peter Doctor’s team honored the experience so, so well. And they even beautifully taught viewers grounding methods, as we see Riley breathe deep, touch the surface of the bench, listen to the sounds, and return to the present moment.)
I imagine that several of us are carrying layers of growth and change, grief and joy, and worry and peace within us these days. And we’re likely carrying these alongside a longing for rest and recovery in whatever ways our soul uniquely needs such rest and recovery. Perhaps you’re aware of these layers within you, or perhaps some are still buried deep beneath the surface, unseen or unnamed, but still felt or acknowledged in some strange way. (Yoga and walking are definitely helping the layers wiggle up to the surface for me lately.)
And yet, I look outside my window and see at least 40 cows resting in the grass, grazing, being, breathing… as we speed by at 70mph, rushing toward a few hours of annual memories, traditions, and connection with loved ones… hoping to be as fully present then as I am trying to be in this moment right now.
There’s so much both-and, my friends. May we make space for all of it, and for the unexpected nuance in between, too.
As you cherish these last days of 2024, returning to my word of this year (connection), may you tune into the connection you need within your heart, mind, body, and soul. May you prioritize your connection with your closest loved ones, and as Dr. Michael Stroop reminded many of us during Baylor’s December Faculty/Staff Worship Service, may we intentionally and wholeheartedly “love who is in front of us”.
…including ourselves.
One last thing to share on that note — this month marks 5 whole years of sobriety for this fellow traveler. After relying on wine to wind down after so many high-stress days, I woke up on December 26, 2019, said “no more,” and haven’t looked back. Thank God — because I cannot imagine what navigating COVID or so many life events since would have looked like. And with the idea that “waking gives way to waking” (thanks for that lesson, Seth Haines), I’ll also be celebrating 6 months of no coffee or caffeinated drinks this month. All of it is a one-day-at-a-time gift, which I imagine will yield other wakings down the road.
For those of you navigating sobriety this holiday season, please know that I see you and am wholeheartedly cheering you on. And for those of you who are sober curious, all I can say is… sobriety has been so worth it for my own healing journey. Know that I’m cheering you on, too, as you discern + take whatever steps you need to take for you along your own unique healing journey — whatever it looks like for you.
Spirituality + Mental Health
Each month, you’ll find miscellaneous resources here on the intersection of spirituality + mental health that I’ve recently been reminded of or come across! Most are general resources, but I’ll add some research-focused ones every now and then.
SAMHSA’s Support During the Holidays Toolkit
From the website: The holiday season can be filled with joy and celebrations. This time of year can also trigger difficult emotions, thoughts, or behaviors—which can affect your mental health and use of substances (including alcohol). Let your friends, family, and communities know that confidential support is available 24/7 for both mental health and substance use.
U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services’ Surgeon General Advisory on Parental Mental Health & Well-Being
From the website: This Surgeon General's Advisory highlights the stressors that impact the mental health and well-being of parents and caregivers, the critical link between parental mental health and children's long-term well-being, and the urgent need to better support parents, caregivers, and families.
NOTE: Especially with the holiday season and kids being out of school, I especially want to elevate attention to parents taking good care of themselves these days. If you carry multiple layers as a helper (parent and teacher/therapist/coach/nurse/etc.), please, please prioritize caring for you well these days. Be excessively gentle with you, dear one.
CXMH Podcast
CXMH is a podcast on faith and mental health that I’ve cohosted alongside my friend, Robert Vore. Below are a couple of previous episodes, but please share episodes with others!
60 - Taking Care of Yourself During the Holidays (& Reflecting on the Year)
86 - Grieving During the Holidays (feat. Lanta Carroll)
Research Updates 🥳
Here are a couple of my team’s recent research articles. If you’re interested in accessing any of our previous papers, please visit my ResearchGate page.
Current Mental Health Clients’ Religious/Spiritual Beliefs and Practices: A National Survey (Oxhandler, Polson, Pearce, Vieten, & Pargament, 2024)
This article describes the results of a cross-sectional survey of current mental health clients’ religious/spiritual beliefs and practices, as well as how clients perceive such practices as influencing their mental health. A total of 989 self-identified mental health clients across the United States completed an anonymous online survey in 2018. This survey included several items and instruments to measure clients’ religious affiliation, religious/spiritual beliefs and practices, and a new set of items to assess the degree to which clients perceive their religious/spiritual practices impacting their mental health. The results of descriptive, correlation, and chi-square analyses indicate religion/spirituality (RS) play a nuanced and complex role in most clients’ lives, with a majority reporting positive views related to their RS and indicating they consider their religious/spiritual practices to be helpful when it comes to their mental health. Further, there are several noteworthy similarities and differences between mental health clients’ religious/spiritual beliefs and practices as compared with those of the general U.S. population during 2018 as well as a national sample of licensed clinical social workers in 2013. Based on these findings, implications and considerations are discussed for social work practitioners serving mental health clients, and for educators training the next generation of social workers.
Enhancing training in spiritual and religious competencies in mental health graduate education: Evaluation of an integrated curricular approach
(Pearce, Pargament, Wong, Hinkel, Salcone, Morgan, Kemp, Brock, Kim, Oxhandler, Vieten, Fox, Polson, & Currier, 2024)
Despite practice guidelines for multiculturally competent care, including spiritual/religious diversity, most mental health graduate training programs do not formally address spiritual/religious competencies. Thus, we enhanced the Spiritual Competency Training in Mental Health (SCT-MH) course curriculum to train graduate students in foundational attitudes, knowledge, and skills for addressing clients’ spirituality and/or religion (S/R). The hybrid (online and in-person) SCT-MH course curriculum was integrated into existing required graduate clinical courses (replacing 15% of a course’s curriculum) and taught to 309 students by 20 instructors in 20 different graduate training programs across counseling, psychology, and social work disciplines. Using a multiple baseline waitlist control design in which students served as their own controls, students completed validated assessments at three timepoints evaluating their spiritual/religious competencies for understanding the intersection between S/R and mental health. We also collected qualitative data from the students to evaluate acceptability of the content and format of the training program. Students’ scores on all seven measures of spiritual/religious competencies had a statistically significant positive increase after engaging with the SCT-MH curriculum compared to the control period. At the end of the course, 97% of the students envisioned using spiritually integrated therapy techniques with their clients at least some of the time, 92% or more rated the materials as helpful and relevant, and 96% were satisfied with the training modules. Results demonstrate that dedicating a small (i.e., 6 hours of class time; 10 hours outside class time) but intentional amount of course time to teaching spiritual/religious competencies increases students’ attitudes, knowledge, and skills for attending to clients’ S/R in clinical practice. The SCT-MH hybrid course content is freely available to all graduate programs on our website. https://www.spiritualandreligiouscompetenciesproject.com/resources/sct-mh.
A Couple of Books for Your Journey
Take Your Time: The Wisdom of Slowing Down by Eknath Easwaran
Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times by Bishop Michael Curry and Sara Grace
Want MORE book recommendations? Check out my bookshop page!
(I get a tiny portion of purchases made through that link, but feel free to buy the book wherever you prefer. I mostly prefer the layout for recommending books to others!)
What I’m Listening To These Days
I’m returning to some mid-90s music, and this album always seems to remind me to breathe a bit deeper and drop my shoulders a bit more. It also takes me back to working in my mom and aunt’s kids’ clothing store on the Erie Canal, Just Ducky.
My favorite Christmas album — don’t miss Snow or this version of O, Holy Night.
Benediction
Dear friends, as we breathe into this last week(ish) of 2024, into Advent’s week of love, into the bustle of holiday gatherings and roller coaster of emotions ahead as we gather with loved ones, and as we inch toward the end of this year…
May you place your hand on your heart and remind yourself what a miraculous, unpromised gift it is to get to see the end of this year.
May you receive the gifts of hope, peace, joy, and love offered within this Advent season, remembering the gift of Emmanuel each Christmas — that God is with us.
May you courageously hold space for all that 2024 offered — the planned and unplanned events, news, grief, connections, healing, and love.
May you sit with what you notice to the very best of your ability, remembering you are loved and that you are worth loving.
May you continue to do the quiet, deep, holy work of recovery, rest, and healing, remembering that what happens within you ripples out towards those you serve.
May you really and truly honor your needs, boundaries, and overall well-being in a humble effort to end 2024 and begin 2025 in a state of wholeness. Not perfection, already overachieving, or well-planned — but, whole.
Be well, friends. Breathe deep and remember how truly loved you are as you are in this moment.
Kindly,
Holly
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