The faces told the story long before anyone spoke. In my evening art therapy class, the room glowed with the dim amber light of a winter sunset, but the students looked washed in grey. Eyes heavy. Bodies slumped. Expressions drifting somewhere between weary and defeated. These are graduate students who usually enter class buzzing with creative energy, swapping stories from their practicum sites, passing around charcoal sticks and water pens like candy. But that night, the spark was gone. When I asked them how they were feeling, one student whispered, “I’m trying… I’m just trying to make it through the holidays.”

The next morning in my therapy sessions, the theme echoed again and again. Clients I’ve worked with for years arrived depleted, apologizing for their exhaustion as if fatigue were a moral failing. Several described dreading upcoming social gatherings, not because they lacked love and support, but because the emotional labor felt heavy. One client said, “I’m already running on the last fumes of fall. I don’t know how I’m supposed to turn myself ‘on’ for the holidays.”

Some years, the holiday season doesn’t feel like light and laughter. It feels like a season of stretching—socially, emotionally, physically—just when our bodies are asking us to rest. As a somatic-informed, intuitive-led therapist, I pay close attention to the rhythm of energy, and lately, the collective rhythm feels deeply........

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