Do you feel a mix of emotions this time of year? Joy, happiness, connection - as well as grief, sadness, and loneliness?

We see commercials, Instagram & Facebook feeds full of everyone celebrating, being 'joyful'. Yet if this isn't our current reality, it can intensify the grief that is either prominent - or was laying dormant, unexpressed.

Grief illuminates the divide between our current reality to what once was, or what never was. It can be hard to talk about, because it doesn't feel very welcome in a time of 'good cheer' and 'holiday spirit'.

Yet death, divorce, heartache, illness, absence, and the wounds of abandonment (both emotional and physical) can bubble to the surface for nearly every single one of us this time of year.

Aging is its own form of grief - one that we all wrestle with (including the grief of babies becoming children, becoming teenagers, becoming adults... there is always grief with change, as welcome as it also is).

When there isn't space to allow these...

Is your inbox as full as mine? Black Friday! Cyber Monday! Giving Tuesday!

And so here we are... fully immersed in the holiday season before we have even turned the calendar to December.

I won't lie. It all makes me tired. It is a quick pull away from this moment - a grounded sense of enough. Of plenty. It reminds me just how quickly we can get pulled off center.

It isn't necessarily negative - so much that is being offered is lovely, worthy, helpful, and fun! It is just that there is an incessant pace to all of it at this time of year. This is the first ingredient of the storm.

It is the season of over-spending, over-eating, over-drinking, over-committing, general over-indulging. Each one of these has an effect on your financial wellbeing. Combined, it creates a bit of internal chaos.

This time of year also holds emotional highs and lows - for many of us this time is laced with sorrow or nostalgia for what was, or isn't. This is another layer of the storm - and...