Does the holiday season really need to be so overwhelming? Janet admits she gets caught up in the bustle and excitement of holiday festivities. While her intention every year is to pare down to make more room for meaningful moments with her loved ones, she still finds herself shopping until the last minute for the perfect gift and wrapping into the wee hours of Christmas Day. Janet’s more than ready to take off her Santa hat and find ways to do less and enjoy more, but doesn’t know exactly how to make it happen.
Happily, this week’s guest is inspirational pastor and community leader Ashlee Eiland, who shares loads of wisdom and actionable suggestions for prioritizing joy and meaning in the holidays, for our kids and us.
Transcript of “Less Stress, More Joy This Holiday Season (With Ashlee Eiland)”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
My guest today is Ashlee Eiland. She’s the mother of three and author of two books, Say Good and Human(Kind). She’s a pastor and a passionate advocate for building strong relationships. Ashlee’s currently head of school at Living Stones Academy in Grand Rapids. It’s a preschool through elementary school that she describes as a beacon of hope and light in the world. It’s diverse culturally and socioeconomically, and it’s a school that cares about living in authenticity and embodied justice. Ashlee’s been featured in a timely new film called Leap of Faith, which follows a diverse group of 12 pastors and Christian leaders with politically and culturally polarizing views. They’re focused on learning how to talk through their differences and bridge divides between them to not only tolerate but love each other.
I invited Ashlee here today because she has loads of wisdom and inspiration to share for how we can stress less and discover more peace, meaning, and joy this holiday season. I’m personally looking forward to what Ashlee has to say because this is a challenge that I have every year, paring down to what really matters during the holidays.
Hi, Ashlee. Thank you so much for being here.
Ashlee Eiland: Janet, it truly is a joy to join you. Thanks for having me.
Janet Lansbury: As you know, I’ve been a fan of your work for a long time. I love your book Say Good. So I hope we get to talk a little about that today because it’s just been an important book for me. It really speaks to my life and my work and what I’ve been doing, and I love the way that you share the information.
What I wanted to bring you on for today, though, you did a post on Instagram that really caught my attention, because I need this. You wrote:
Before the chaos of the holidays, decide NOW how you’ll protect your joy and your peace.
- Say “no” to comparison and over-functioning.
- Define what looks like success for you and your family.
- Define how to communicate those success measures to friends, family/in-laws.
- Reject over-consumption and over-spending.
- Name an accountability partner.
- Schedule in “no” days (when nothing gets scheduled) and choose to prioritize Sabbath.
May this be our most grounded season yet.
I’m sure there’s other people like me that really have a hard time paring down around the holidays to what really matters, to what will fuel our souls for a new year, bring us closer together as people and families. And I feel like I really believe in that and I know how to do it in daily life with kids, I’ve learned how to do that now. But something happens to me during these winter holidays. There’s an expectation in me that, I don’t know, makes it harder. I want to celebrate Christmas in a meaningful way, but I sometimes struggle to find that balance. I would just love to hear what you have to say. You have so much wisdom on these topics.
Ashlee Eiland: Well thank you, Janet. I am starting to love equipping myself, my friends, folks who are in similar seasons of life and even seasons beyond mine of parenting littles with these ideas that joy and a sense of levity and freedom within us is actually possible. We don’t have to stay on this incessantly busy train where we are needing to cave to the pressures of what the holidays bring.
It was actually while on vacation that I had this thought. We were in Wisconsin with our family on fall break, and I could just sense my body viscerally responding to what’s coming up in the weeks ahead. And it’s unique for our family because out of the six of us, and I include my mom who lives with us part of the year, four of my family members have winter birthdays. Both of my girls have December birthdays—my oldest was born on Christmas Eve—and then my son was born in January and my husband in February. So I’ve always joked the past couple of years that as soon as Halloween is over, begins the craziest time of my year.
The little quip I throw out there is that I am broke between Thanksgiving and February, because we’re just spending so much time and money on parties and festivities and gift giving. And those things actually bring me a lot of joy. My number one love language, I’ve found, is giving gifts. I love buying things for friends and I love receiving gifts. But what I’ve noticed is that it kind of tugs at my soul in a particular way when the things that are really life-giving have become the most prescient sources of stress for me.
I’m at a season of life where I want to enter into these busy seasons with a sense of agency, deeply taking in, in a way that I am present, all of the good that surrounds me. And so I’ve started to think through, how do we do that? So that’s where the thought came from. And really I think the beginnings of that kind of freedom and the beginnings of that kind of levity comes with the space to think ahead about the lives that we want to live. What needs to change now so that we can have the space to be more present in the moments ahead of us these holidays?
Janet Lansbury: And what does that look like?
Ashlee Eiland: First I’d say that for any family, it’s taking stock of what’s currently true. As seasons change for us, I used to think a year ahead at a time just given our kids’ stages of life, but now I think more in semesters or trimesters. I work at a school, so that’s just a natural thinking rhythm for me. And so with each change of the season, I’m thinking through, What are our kids involved in in these next few weeks? And that changes pretty regularly for us because we have kids who are ages nine, eight, and five, and so they’re just starting to get into some of these regular communal activities. It used to be that my oldest two were playing ultimate Frisbee as a part of our school’s team, but now that’s changed and my daughter’s playing basketball, my son is taking clarinet, and my youngest and my oldest are both in dance.
So we sit down once a month—we just started this, so this is new for us after weeks and months of wrestling with how to carve out time. We have family meetings and we talk about the calendar and we talk about what we want to be true. And we include our kids, age-appropriately, as well as my mom in that discussion, to say, What excites you about what’s coming up in these few weeks? What makes you nervous? And that gives our kids a chance to hear from us, as their parents, our desire for our future rhythms. So I say, “Mommy doesn’t want to be stressed out and short-tempered when it comes to our schedules that are too full. I want to really be able to enjoy all of you and have moments of slowness, versus rushing here to there.” So we get to verbalize our collective desires.
And I’d say if you haven’t as a family unit come up with family values—this is something we did really recently and we hung them in our kitchen so that we can be true to those family values even in the holiday season. So first we said assess what’s true now, and then two, through the naming of those desires, say, this is what I want to be true for the next run of weeks or months.
Maybe there’s a conversation that, if you have a partner, you and your partner are on the same page first. Particularly if there are multiple family stops around the way, whether it’s involving travel and one family usually gets a certain portion of travel and another family wants to stay home just with their immediate family unit and kids. I know that can be a source of tension. So maybe there’s two layers of that conversation in the naming of desires.
But then you get to hear from everyone. And ahead of time, you get to hear and verbalize and leave space to name what’s really true for you. And sometimes this might take the form of excitement and joy, and other times this might sound more like confession. Like, Actually, I kind of want to stay home this year. But I’d encourage families to take the time to create and carve out space to name what’s true for you and to leave space for desire before this automatic run cycle starts carrying us through the holidays.
Then I’d say, after those desires are named, a good next step is to come up with these agreements that you hold to and you come back to in the way of accountability. And some of those agreements could be with your adult friendship groups. Just to say, Hey, someone check in on me and ask me how I’m doing in setting boundaries with my in-laws, or Someone check in on me and make sure that I’m taking the me time or the spaces of silence and solitude that I said I’d need in order to make it through these weeks healthily. So friendship is a key part of that in the way of accountability.
But then as a family unit, what does it look like to keep each other accountable in really positive ways? Oftentimes we think of accountability as this negative concept where it’s preventing us from doing something wrong or assigning some sort of consequence for doing something incorrectly. Whereas I think of accountability—and I write a little bit about this in Say Good—as an opportunity to give testimony or to speak positively about what we want our lives to look like and to have others join us along the journey in that way.
Those are three simple framing steps that I might use if someone’s getting started and trying to stay ahead of this for the holidays: (1) to name what’s true now, (2) to leave space to name desire and get on the same page, and then (3) have some sort of accountability measure and boundaries, whether with adults and/or with the whole family, around what those boundaries could look like in the service of the kind of life you want to live this holiday season.
Janet Lansbury: That’s so brilliant. I love it.
This is embarrassing. I have three adult children and they all have partners right now. So that’s been another thing for me, that I have basically six children now that I want to perform for throughout the holidays, because that’s the pressure that I put on myself. But even with adult children, I have not done that. And I’m absolutely going to do that, because we could even do it in a chat if we have no other time when we’re all together before the holidays. We can chat with text messages about, How do you see this? What do you want to do? What’s important to you? I mean, that’s kind of pathetic that I haven’t done it with adult kids yet. It’s just so beautiful and brilliant to make everybody feel included, everybody’s heard. And a lot of the things that I put on myself, pressures I put on myself, nobody else might care about except me.
And yet, like you said, I’m already feeling nervous. I have never worked so hard in my life as I’m working right now. I’m writing a book, I’m doing this podcast, I’m trying to keep up with other things, social media and stuff. It’s very all-consuming and I’m feeling very nervous about, How am I going to be the holiday queen and make it all magic for everyone? Why am I still doing this? My kids are adults! But it’s so interesting the patterns that we set for ourselves and how hard it is to break out of them.
Ashlee Eiland: Yeah, that’s so true. And I would be surprised if not almost everyone resonated with that sort of idea, that we’ve given ourselves and have been assigned for ourselves these roles that we play. And for some of us it might be holiday queen. That’s definitely true for me: I am our family’s party planner, I order all the gifts, I’m the one who is project managing the holidays for us.
But I’ll tell you this, one of the things that I realized changed and shifted this perspective for me was actually grief. We don’t talk about this a lot in the scheme of our daily lives all the time, but just to name that, for a lot of us, there is something we grieve during the holidays. And it’s not always the loss of a person. Sometimes it is the loss of agency or the loss of the idea of what we thought was true about ourselves. But meeting that grief and naming it actually helped me realize my own limitations and allowed me to settle in, really more humbly, to, You know what? I’m not this savior of my family that can do everything. I am limited. I do have limited energy. And once I really released this facade that I could do everything, that’s when I became more present.
So for me, the question isn’t just, What do I desire? That’s part of it. But it might be really powerful to say, Hey guys, if I were to offer you one thing this holiday season, what would be most important to you? Whether that’s wearing my daughter hat or my mom hat or my partner hat, as a wife. What do you need from me in order for this season to be most meaningful?
Honestly, my kids just want me to spend time with them most of the time. Yes, they love gifts, and yes, they love surprises. But one of the ways that we have kind of systematized that in our family—my husband had a brilliant idea. He has never been one to be caught up in all of the Christmas magic. I mean, he’ll put together a kitchen set if I ask him to, but I’m really the one that cares about the look and the feel and the smells and the aesthetic of the holidays, for us Christmas is a big one. But he just said, Ashlee, what if instead of sucking our souls dry by trying to find the hottest gifts for our kids and staying up so late and not getting rest so that we can’t enjoy Christmas morning because we’re up late the night before wrapping gifts, what if we gave our kids a choice? And that choice has become, Hey kids, we can either do a traditional Christmas with gifts—and our youngest still believes in Santa, so we’re kind of playing into that a little bit. We can either do that or we can do a family trip. Two out of the past three years, our kids have chosen a family trip.
And honestly, Janet, that has been such a sigh of relief for us. I realize there’s some privilege in that we are able to do family trips, but we budget very wisely throughout the rest of the year. We make intentional financial decisions so that we can have that as an option if the kids choose that. But I remember those trips. We did one cruise and one trip to San Diego as a family the last two out of the three years. And those memories have become so precious, our kids are still talking about them. But I don’t think we would’ve gotten there had we not met ourselves and our own limitations as a couple.
For me personally, especially over the past year, I’m letting go of the cape, in a sense, because grief has worn me down in the most beautiful way. Yes, it’s been hard. Last year I lost my dad and my first cousin within a month of each other, and then I received a pretty crazy diagnosis the week after my dad’s funeral. Meeting my limitations in that way actually made me more present to the things that matter. And I’m just not giving in to this temptation of belief that I can only be an effective and present and loving mom if I run myself thin and have nothing to give by the end of it. That’s just a lie that I’ve believed in the past that I’m choosing not to believe now. But the dialogue around that, both within myself and between the people that I love the most in my family, has truly been one of the ways that permission has come to me more easily.
Janet Lansbury: I’m sorry you’ve had all these losses.
Ashlee Eiland: Thank you. They’ve been hard, for sure.
Janet Lansbury: I see what you’re saying though, also, because even this time of year, without specific losses, it’s that feeling of the end of the year. As you’re talking, I’m thinking to myself that maybe that’s also a reason that I want it to have this splashy ending. Not just that it’s Christmas and I love Christmas and I love all the ambiance of Christmas and the aesthetics. And like you, I’m in charge of all of that, it’s been my thing in the family. But it’s also this kind of, How did we get through this year of ups and downs? Of all the things that have happened, some really hard things. So there is that feeling in itself. I usually have a good cry on Christmas night, or not Christmas night, but the day after or something, in front of a fireplace with all my little lights and candles and stuff. It’s not necessarily a sad cry, it’s just, Whew, all of this life.
Ashlee Eiland: I wonder if the end of the year is a release for a lot of us, that somehow we’ve made it. And I don’t know what our different markers of success are for each of us or our families, but there is something about reaching the end of something that, even though it’s good, there is a sense of transition that’s forced. And for some of us, transition is hard, even if it’s for good reason. And so I desire to be really present to those transitions because I know they teach me something.
I’m also realizing as my kids are getting older, that I think I’ve given myself this idea that I need to play all the roles in order to create the story and craft the narrative that our life is good. And our kids actually have so much brilliance in them, and I’m learning to let go of some of the roles that I’ve assumed so that my kids can shine differently. I’ve been this one-woman play for so many years and I’m going, No, we’ve got this really cool cast of characters in my family. And even though our family is complex and our extended family is filled with hard stories and hard parts of it, I’m a piece of it, I’m not the whole thing. I can give my husband the joy of being the chef in our family, he loves to cook. I don’t have to stress about what we’re going to eat, and he can play his part. And my son is a master engineer in his eight-year-old mind. And how can I give him a problem that maybe I’m facing that he can help solve? And my oldest is a creative, and so how can I have her help me decorate the house in a way that’s unique to her style? I’m just learning to let go more.
But as we reach those natural endings, and for many of us it’s the end of a calendar year, I get why there would be tears. Because there’s been so much leading up to this culmination of putting a stamp on, for us right now, it’s 2024. Did that matter? Was it meaningful? Did I do what I needed to do in order to make the most of my life and the time that I had? And so yeah, the holidays are a really natural time for that release to happen. And I’m not surprised at all that you would find yourself in front of a fire, and I’m imagining my fireplace with a cozy blanket and a cup of something warm and going, Yeah, that’s a really reflective time for me, and how do I not miss that?
Janet Lansbury: Yeah, somehow I always find my way to that. But I love your idea about delegating. That’s so brilliant because that just raises everybody up, that just makes everybody feel more involved.
I would love to go over some of these specifics that you shared, just to hear your take on them. The first one you said is, “Say ‘no’ to comparison and over-functioning.” How do we say no to comparison? That’s a really hard thing. I mean, I love the advice that I heard Susan David say recently, which is, Keep your eyes on your own work, just like in school. And know that’s where you have the power, that’s what you’re here for. But what do you think about that? It is hard to not get caught up in the comparisons.
Ashlee Eiland: Yeah, it is. And I’d say for me it’s about my inputs. If I’m choosing to allow inputs in my life that give me myriad opportunities for comparison, then that’s where my mind and patterning is naturally going to fall. But if I choose instead to limit my inputs in a holiday season. It’s almost like we have to do the opposite, the opposite of where our days and our cultural patterning are taking us. So if things are picking up, if we’re seeing more ads and life seems more hurried, it’s almost like we need to do the opposite thing and slow down. And so I’d say as opposed to consuming all the media or just saying yes to all of the scrolling that we can be tempted to do, or at least I can be tempted to do, I give myself more space to not have any inputs at all. For me, that is silence in the morning. I try to get up at least an hour and a half before the rest of my family and just have time to sit and think about my thinking.
And that helps intercept the second source where comparison comes from, and that’s from our own thinking, our own sense of self. I can really evaluate, How do I see myself right now? How am I talking to myself? What is the conversation like in my own head? Am I as kind to myself as I would be to a dear friend or a family member I love? Or even, Does it line up with the kindness I would extend to a stranger I see in a public space? If I am more charitable to those around me and not as kind to myself, then it doesn’t matter what those inputs are. It doesn’t matter what the work is, even if it’s really good work and I’m choosing to keep my eyes on that really good work. I think there’s something about evaluating our relationships with self that kind of source this idea of how our comparison meter gets ramped up or put in check.
And so I’d say, in a time and a season where we can be the most prone to comparison, having a really gentle sense of self and a really charitable and kind dialogue with ourselves is the start of keeping comparison at bay.
Janet Lansbury: That’s so wise. One thing that I gave up a few years ago was doing the Christmas card with the family portrait, which was all on me. I had to make everybody do it, figure it out, I had to get it done in a way that I liked. Then I had to do the address list and send it all out. And that was just another thing, and I haven’t. But then when you get all these beautiful cards, you’re like, Ahhh! Oh gosh, I feel so guilty still. But that was me being kinder to myself. Yeah, it’s disappointing because you want to put that out there and everybody loves to receive a card from you and everybody loves to see what your family looks like now and how you all are. But it’s just, I can’t, it’s too much.
Ashlee Eiland: Yeah. It’s funny, I was chuckling because that’s one of my favorite things to do at the holidays, so that’s the one thing I haven’t given up. Because for me, I love a good administrative project, I love a good Excel sheet and color-coding and just seeing names. But I’ve turned it into almost like my creative project for the holidays. And so every year we pick a different mural or cool artistic spot in the city, and that’s fun for me, it’s restful for me to find that space for our family. And now my daughter helps me coordinate our outfits.
So I’ve had to say, What are the things that could be really stressful for other people but that are unique to me in bringing me to life during the holidays? And that’s going to be different for all of us, so it’s really knowing ourselves and going, How do I define rest? Is it truly just doing nothing and binge-watching a good sitcom and having a slow day? Or is there something more active that could be part of my rest repertoire, if you will? And so I love that we’re so different in that regard because the thing that you’re choosing to say no to, I’m like, No, that brings me so much life!
Janet Lansbury: That’s a yes for you.
Ashlee Eiland: Yeah, that’s a yes for me.
Janet Lansbury: Well, I have to say that when you said going away for the holidays—I could go after, for New Year’s or something like that, but my whole life I’ve been at home on Christmas and I just cannot imagine something else. So I feel like that’s really important to me, just to be home and taking it all in instead of out somewhere. And that’s just me. But I know a lot of people do love traveling.
And the whole thing of a family trip, we just did one, it was for a memorial service for my father-in-law. But it was so fun to have this extended family trip, an excuse for it, even though there were lots of feelings all around, but it was mostly just such a positive thing. And I thought, I want to do more family trips. Of course now my family is six kids, it’s eight of us, so it’s growing, growing, growing. But it is so beautiful, like you said, the memories and all the time. We have this picture of us all in an elevator in New York. And my mother-in-law, who’s quite elderly, and she’s in the picture in a wheelchair, and we’re all just, our faces are all in it, and I love it. Anyway, those kinds of moments that you never thought were a moment, but then it was.
Ashlee Eiland: That’s the beauty of paying attention: something that you underestimate having that sort of weightiness to it. I love that you’re going, yeah, that was a moment that was really beautiful and meaningful to our family even though no one planned for that piece of it necessarily. But how cool that you and your family were able to honor your father-in-law in that way. And I’m sorry for your loss, and I’m also grateful that you’re able to kind of reflect on that time together in a positive way.
Janet Lansbury: Thank you.
So then you said, “Define what looks like success for you and your family.” So you’ve done that really well, explaining how to have the family meeting and discuss. And I’m totally down for that, I think that sounds wonderful.
“Define how to communicate those success measures to friends, family/in-laws.” And this is where I thought that your book Say Good is really about that, how to speak your voice, how to know when to say, what to say, how to say it, who to say it to. I think that is a hard one for a lot of us.
Ashlee Eiland: It is. And I think there’s wisdom in who to assign to certain conversations if there’s multiple people in the family. And so I know early on, my parents taught my husband and me that if it’s dealing with a certain person’s side of the family, then that person has the conversation. And so that gave us a good rubric for anything dealing with my husband’s side of the family, he was going to have that hard conversation; anything dealing with my parents, I was going to have that conversation. And it’s about timing as much as it is about content and the what. It’s about the spirit of the conversation as much as it is about the content of the conversation.
And so I think a lot of the intentionality in that, and I say “how to communicate those success measures” on purpose because the how oftentimes gets lost in the anxiety of the what. And so to plan ahead and say, You know what? I want to be at ease when I have this conversation with my mom or my mother-in-law or whoever it is. Or I want to feel confident and bold when I say, You know what, dad? We’re actually choosing to stay home this Christmas instead of making the long trip, and here’s why we decided that. And is there an alternative way that we can be together or kind of hold the tradition differently for whatever reason?
I think the way that we see our family members matters. If we go in seeing them as adversaries, then it’s going to be an adversarial conversation. But if we can be generous in how we see the people that we’re setting those boundaries with and communicating those success measures to, then I oftentimes think that’s half the battle of having the hard conversation. Assuming that whatever bond or love is there is enough to hold you and keep you beyond that hard conversation.
Sometimes we assume that because people know us well that they can read our minds. And I’m just learning more and more as I do life that no one can read my mind, no one knows exactly what I’m thinking. So how can I get ahead of some of the anticipation of that and really be brave in showing up in ways to advocate for what our family needs?
Janet Lansbury: I love that. I really needed your book, like I said, and it reminded me of so many things and kind of bolstered me. I’m not a person who would ever be described as somebody that wants to make their voice heard. The only reason I have a voice out there is because the message that I wanted to share felt so compelling that I pushed through really being a shy, more introverted person. That is what can compel us to be brave, like you said, because we value something so much, whether it’s the time that we spend with our families during the holidays or something else, social justice or whatever that we’re talking about. It’s that weight of that message that will push us over the edge to what’s needed to talk about it.
Ashlee Eiland: Yes. But I also think, just to give you so much credit, Janet, I think it’s also the way you communicate your passion and your heart to people that’s so compelling. I know that’s what got me through so many hard times with my littles and listening to your podcast episodes and engaging with you online. It’s not just what you believe and what your passion is, it’s the way that you communicate that to others. I think you have a companioning spirit about you that comes alongside.
And that’s what I want for anyone who is choosing to say yes in a season to something that they love or want to uphold as a value. It’s just as much about how we hold that value or how we communicate what we believe or want to pour ourselves into that matters. And so kudos to you and also an encouragement for others to say that who you are while you are doing these things absolutely matters. And how you show up in spaces while you are doing the planning and the carrying out of the event or the travel or whatever it might be matters just as much as the what. So thank you for showing us the way in your work.
But also I’d say for others, there’s so much to that adage that we hear on airplanes, put on your oxygen mask first. Because as we are carrying out our gifts and talents to the world, how we hold them and who we choose to be in the midst of all of that really matters.
Janet Lansbury: Thank you so much, Ashlee. Your words are really an honor. I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes, but thank you. I really appreciate that so much.
“Reject over-consumption and over-spending.” Yeah, I don’t know. At least monitor it.
Ashlee Eiland: Yes, I know.
Janet Lansbury: I love that you said that about gifts because it gave me this huge sigh of relief when you started out in the beginning saying you love giving gifts. Because I don’t give gifts all year, I mean, I give them a birthday gift maybe. But this is my time when I give gifts and I really do like that part. But I need to still cut it way back and know that that’s enough. And I guess that’s really maybe one of the hardest things. And yeah, it is a privileged thing to say too. Because even when there’s one gift from each of us around a tree, it looks like X-Mass right there. Because we’ve got eight of us each giving each other one gift and it looks sick. It looks like, Something’s wrong with this family, they’re so over the top, I mean really. But anyway, any secrets to that?
Ashlee Eiland: Oh gosh. I am not the first person to think of this, but we gave ourselves this rubric with our kids. We’ve said: What’s something you want, something you need, something to wear, something to read, and something for someone in need? And so if I hear my kids in September say, Oooh mom, I really want the next book in a certain series, I’ll jot that down in my notes app. And so it kind of helps me practice restraint. And sometimes those gifts don’t come in the form of a formally wrapped present. So if we do a traditional Christmas, like something to wear, I’ve just decided I’m giving my kids matching socks. And they’ve loved that, that’s become a tradition for us. In their stocking we all get matching family socks. Or I get cool sweatshirts for my kids that kind of match, and they’ve fallen in love with that. It doesn’t have to be this extravagant display, but that kind of a rubric for me has helped me, as a gift giver, practice restraint.
For those who don’t love gift giving as much, maybe there’s another practice, like pay attention to the people in your lives and as they light up in mentioning an activity or something that they’re getting interested in, a new hobby or a place that they’d like to go. Maybe it’s a gift card or an experience versus a thing. But we can get creative in the ways that we’re paying attention to one another.
And also withholding and trusting that the relationship is enough that we don’t have to prove our affection through the things that we give. That’s the takeaway for me, is my family loves me no matter what, and it doesn’t have to be quantified in the number of gifts under a tree.
Janet Lansbury: Beautiful. Okay, “Name an accountability partner.” I got a big uh-oh when I read that because to me, it’s like, Okay, this means I’m really doing it. When you tell someone you’re going on a diet, now, it’s not only the judge in my head, but I’ve got another judge over there. But as you said, you can make that a positive thing. That somebody’s just on your team helping you, not pointing a finger when you’re crossing a line or something like that.
Ashlee Eiland: Yeah, we can make it about celebration and transformation versus restriction. When we invite people that we know love us and are for us into that kind of accountability, it becomes a regular discipline of celebration stitched into our everyday lives. And that’s the way I like to see accountability in these regards is, How are we celebrating my transformation and me becoming someone new, even as I’m an adult and leading a family? And so it’s the rethinking of that relationship to accountability that’s been really key for me.
Janet Lansbury: Help me know if I’m on the track that I want to be on.
Ashlee Eiland: Yeah, exactly.
Janet Lansbury: I like that. And then, “Schedule in ‘no’ days (when nothing gets scheduled).” I’m actually good at those because I really don’t like schedules very much at all, I have to say, I love the spontaneity of things. But then I find that I’m also rushing out and doing things at the last minute. I’m not very good with time management. I don’t have your organizational love for dotting the i’s and the spreadsheets. No, sorry, I’m your other brain.
Ashlee Eiland: I love it. It’s funny because I actually love spontaneity in relationships. So if someone were like, Hey, the kids are down, you want to hang out by the bonfire? I’m like, Yes, I want to do that! I just know, especially with our family’s unique makeup of birthdays and events happening around November, December, January, especially, that I have to plan ahead of time when we are just doing nothing. And it doesn’t matter how compelling it is or how tempted I am, there just has to be a regular rhythm for us where we have nothing going on.
And so our family tries to practice Sabbath. So that’s one day a week that we just don’t work, where I don’t do chores, dishes, the laundry can wait. Where it’s really restful and we are prioritizing fun and togetherness and feasting. But it may not be every week for certain families. It could be, Hey, what’s the one day this month or the one day of Thanksgiving week where we are just not moving?
Or defining rest, whatever rest looks like for you, because it’s not always doing nothing. It could be going to your favorite spot in the city or spending time with another family that just brings you life, you could spend hours with them. We can define rest differently. But how do we plan that ahead of time before there are so many other events? And especially with school-aged kids, all the school events and the calendaring and the extracurriculars that can take up the holidays and before you know it, you’re stressed out. So kind of wiggle those in ahead of time so that when you do get busy, you know that there’s a sigh of relief coming up in your schedule that you can look forward to.
Janet Lansbury: Wonderful. Well, you are such a gift, Ashlee. Thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom and all your great ideas and just connecting with me. I really, really appreciate it.
Ashlee Eiland: Janet, this has been so fun. Thanks for having me, and thank you for all you do to encourage us in our parenting journeys.
Janet Lansbury: Well, everybody read Ashlee’s book Say Good. And I just purchased her first book, Human(Kind). I’m also enjoying that, I’m in the middle of reading it.
I’m wishing you all a peaceful, joyful holiday season. And you, Ashlee, with all your birthdays and Christmas and the New Year and Thanksgiving. Whatever anybody celebrates, well, I think we’ve earned it. But we don’t need to earn it, we all deserve a wonderful season.
Ashlee Eiland: We do.
Janet Lansbury: And thank you for sharing how we can make ours more joyful as well.
Ashlee Eiland: Thanks for having me, Janet.
Janet Lansbury: I hope we get to talk again soon.
Ashlee Eiland: Yeah, me too. Me too. I would love to.
Janet Lansbury: Bye, Ashlee.
Ashlee Eiland: Bye, Janet.