Grateful for Family, Gathered in Grace
From early on, I learned that family isn’t just about keeping your nose clean; it’s about tending to the ties that bind us through life’s shifting tides. My family’s shape has changed across the years, but the value of staying connected has only deepened, especially as we gather in this season.
But through years of practice, teaching Brave Rest, and moving from exhaustion to renewal, I’ve realized: we can’t tend to those ancient, complicated threads with empty hands. Family holds our oldest stories, those who remember our beginnings, our rebellions, and the versions of ourselves we’ve since outgrown. Being together awakens our nervous systems to those ingrained roles and rules.
That’s why self-work, and especially rest, matters. When we restore ourselves, through deep rest, conscious pauses, and tending our nervous systems, we create space for paradox: loving while disagreeing, honoring history while releasing patterns, staying connected while remaining sovereign.
For each family gathering is an invitation to fearless surrender. Not surrendering our boundaries, but releasing the urge to manage everyone else’s experience, and the belief that love requires depletion. The threads that bind us are honey and vinegar, some golden, others tangled with old hurt or silent stories. They’re all part of the tapestry, but we don’t have to hold them with white knuckles.
Brave Rest softens everything. When filled from within, we sit at the table without losing ourselves in old scripts. We can witness, not fix; love, not perform; relate, not disappear.
This is the revolutionary act: caring for yourself deeply enough to offer presence, not depletion, a rested heart, a mind that knows stillness. As you gather, ask: could your greatest gift be your own wholeness?
Staying together doesn’t mean staying the same. It means doing the rest work, the nervous system work, holding complicated love with grace. Showing up resourced to see your family fully, and yourself as well.
Keep your nose clean, yes—but more so, keep your heart resourced, your rest sacred, and return to what helps you remember who you are now. This is how we honor the complex gift of family: we rest, we show up whole, and offer what matters, presence, grace, gratitude, and love that does not deplete.
The threads will always be complicated, but held from a place of rest, they can become lighter, more beautiful, and closer to blessing.
From my corner of the sea to yours, prayers to you all for a blessed holiday season.
Sarah
