During the holidays I took a healing pause. It’s difficult to tap the brakes during a book launch, yet slowing down is exactly what I needed. Disconnected: Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage consumed my attention as I did events, appeared as a guest on podcasts, and promoted my new book during the last months of 2024.

During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, I turned off screens, limited distractions, and sat quietly in the dark with a few candles flickering each night.

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Finding the Goldilocks combination of stillness and activity during the holidays is challenging. I reinforced my natural rhythms with rituals, beautiful music, my old-school tree decorations, and candles. I sat in the flickering light and let myself dream.

The Honesty Challenge

I also turned to meditation teacher Tara Brach to support me. One of her recent talks, “The Honesty Challenge: Getting More Truthful with Ourselves and our World,” pushed my buttons in a good way. Small lies we tell to facilitate interactions can deaden our relationships and hold us back, she says. The courage to be more honest is a prerequisite to growth.

“What is true here?” is the question she asked that made me reflect. How often do I shade the truth, jump to conclusions based on scanty evidence, or unwittingly deceive myself? Being ruthlessly honest, my answer is “Frequently.”

Brach, a psychologist, and the author of Radical Compassion, has honed her inquiry skills to a fine art. She teaches a practice called RAIN, where R stands for “recognize,” A stands for “allow,” I is for “investigate,” and N is for “nurture.” She uses stories of her clients’ or her own experiences to show how to put this into practice.

The Way Forward

I spent most of 2024 hacking through the forest of a contentious divorce. At the same time, I prepared to launch a book about the demise of the love that led me to make what I thought was a lifelong commitment. But opposite brain wiring (mine neurotypical, his neurodivergent) led to communication breakdowns and ongoing conflict that killed our marriage.

Hindsight is 20-20, of course. Now I can see all the ways I deceived myself, or minimized signs I should not have overlooked. I’ve needed my own brand of radical compassion, and radical honesty to process the demise of my marriage. Without a daily meditation practice, I cannot imagine how I would have survived the upheaval.

It’s going to take more time to reorient myself and find a direction forward. I’ve taken the first steps, but there’s a long road ahead. Without fully realizing it as I was writing and revising Disconnected, my book points the way. In the end, the narrator chooses self-love and self-compassion, and that’s the path I’m on.

Setting a New Direction

What’s true for me is that I need to practice RAIN with a special emphasis on nurture. When in doubt, I swaddle myself in a cozy blanket and listen to calming music. I am doing all I can to soothe the hurt while focusing on the growth – the rocket fuel – that’s propelling me.

Initiating new intentions and goals – like the apparent pause before the return of the light on the Solstice – requires stillness, something I struggle with especially during the holidays. Thus, the focus on nurturing activities in a safe, quiet environment.

I’m fascinated by the different approaches people take as they set intentions and create goals for the New Year. My fellow writer David Berner, who gave Disconnected a ringing endorsement, published a set of helpful questions in his newsletter The Abundance. I answered them in my journal to help me set a course for 2025.

How do you reset to meet the year? Do you make resolutions? Set intentions? Create a list of goals? Let me know in the chat and we can share our approaches.

One of the best parts of birthing a book is discovering the unique ways that readers receive it. Thank you for reading and supporting my work! Wishing you peace as 2025 dawns.