If You’re Struggling During the Holidays, Read This: a compassionate love letter from tarot.

Suzanne
Dec 7
12 min read

When the Holidays Feel Heavier Than They Look

If you’re struggling right now — really struggling, in a way you can’t quite articulate, or in a way that feels quieter than people around you seem to understand — I want to begin by saying this: you’re not doing anything wrong. There’s nothing defective, dramatic, or “too much” about the way you’re feeling. The holidays have a way of amplifying everything. Joy gets louder, yes, but so does exhaustion. So does loneliness. So does comparison, and the invisible pressure to be bright and buoyant and socially present even when your inner world is moving at a completely different pace.

If this season has opened something tender in you — a sadness, an ache, an absence, a question you don’t yet know how to answer — I want you to know that your experience is valid. More than that, it’s human. So many people move through this time carrying stories they don’t speak aloud, emotions that don’t fit the festive script, or responsibilities that make the “holiday break” anything but restful. And yet, we are so good at believing we’re the only one who feels that way.

So let me say this clearly: You’re not alone in the way your heart feels right now. You’re not behind. You’re not broken. You’re not failing to be “festive enough.”

And you don’t owe the world a performance of joy you don’t actually feel.

I want this letter to be a soft place for you to land — a moment where you get to breathe, unclench your shoulders, and let yourself be exactly where you are. No pretending. No adjusting yourself to make anyone else more comfortable. Just an honest, gentle pause in the middle of a season that can so easily overwhelm the most sensitive parts of us.

And in that pause, tarot sits beside you — not as an answer-machine or spiritual authority, but as a quiet companion who simply refuses to let you carry your feelings alone.

A Season That Holds Too Much (And Not Enough)

The thing about the holidays is that they gather everything at once — the people you love, the people you’ve lost, the expectations you’ve inherited, the memories you never asked to keep, and the pressure to be okay because everyone else seems to be. It’s a season that can feel strangely over-full and under-nourishing at the same time. Too many emotions, not enough space. Too many demands, not enough quiet. Too many reminders of what didn’t happen this year, or what changed before you were ready for it to.

Maybe you’re carrying a grief that doesn’t take time off in December. Maybe you’re sitting inside a loneliness that feels especially loud when everyone else is posting togetherness. Maybe your nervous system is exhausted, stretched thin by months of doing your best in circumstances that would make anyone tired. Maybe the holiday gatherings feel like a performance you can’t quite keep up with. Or maybe the silence of being alone feels heavier than you can admit out loud.

There is no version of struggle that disqualifies you from being cared for. You don’t have to earn your right to gentleness by being upbeat or resilient or endlessly accommodating. You don’t have to pretend that your heart isn’t hurting, or that you’re unaffected by the swirl of expectations around you.

And if you’ve been telling yourself you “should” be coping better, or feeling different, or magically transformed by the season’s sentimentality — I want you to loosen your grip on that idea. The holidays don’t erase your humanity. They don’t cure exhaustion, repair every relationship, or fill every empty space. They don’t remove financial stress, or mend old wounds, or make family dynamics suddenly simple. They don’t fix heartbreak or cure anxiety. They don’t turn uncertainty into clarity.

They simply highlight whatever is already alive in you — the tenderness, the tiredness, the hope, the ache, the longing, the beauty, the mess.

And maybe that’s why this time of year asks more compassion of us than it asks celebration: because the heart reveals itself here in ways we’re not always prepared for, and it needs to be met with honesty, not pressure.

This is where tarot often sits — close but unobtrusive — reminding you that witnessing your own inner world is not the same as being consumed by it. You don’t have to fix what you’re feeling. Just being able to name it is already a kind of care.

You Don’t Have to Be ‘Okay’ to Be Worthy of Love

Photo by Donovan Dean Photography on Unsplash

I want to tell you something that I don’t think we hear enough — especially at this time of year, when every advert and every social gathering seems to suggest that joy is the expected emotional baseline:

You don’t have to be okay to be deserving of love. Not cheerful, not polished, not “managing,” not holding it all together.

You don’t have to soften your feelings so they’re easier for other people to hold. You don’t have to hide the heaviness because it feels inconvenient or unseasonal. And you absolutely don’t have to “wait until you feel better” to be worthy of gentleness, connection, or care.

Your worth isn’t seasonal. It doesn’t fluctuate with your mood, or your capacity, or the number of festive moments you can handle. It doesn’t depend on how tidy your emotions are, or how well you’ve performed resilience today.

If this month has felt like walking through fog, or moving underwater, or carrying invisible weights that no one else can see, your worth remains unchanged. You are still someone who deserves kindness. You are still someone who belongs in the world. You are still someone who is allowed to take up space — even in your struggle, even in your confusion, even in your sadness.

And this is where the presence of tarot, sitting quietly beside you, can be grounding. Not because it fixes anything, or offers a perfectly timed insight, but because it holds space for you exactly as you are. Tarot doesn’t ask you to smile. It doesn’t require you to be festive. It doesn’t rush you toward clarity or demand emotional improvement. It simply reflects you back to yourself with honesty and tenderness.

Some days, that alone is enough to remind you: Your truth is allowed here. Your feelings are allowed here. You are allowed here.

So if you’re not okay right now, please know that you don’t lose access to love — from others, from the world, or from yourself. And the version of you who is struggling? They are not a disappointment. They are simply human, meeting a difficult moment with the best presence they can manage.

And that — truly — is enough.

You Are Not Alone in This (Even If It Feels Like You Are)

One of the hardest parts about struggling during the holidays is how isolating it can feel. When everyone else seems swept up in plans, gatherings, noise, colour, and cheer, your quieter inner world can feel like it’s happening behind soundproof glass. You may be surrounded by people but feel disconnected. You may be physically alone but emotionally overloaded. You may be functioning just fine on the outside while carrying something tender, heavy, or unspoken on the inside.

If that’s where you are, I want you to hear this clearly: You are not the only one moving through the season this way. You’re not the only person whose heart feels heavier than their calendar. You’re not the only one who struggles to find their footing when the world seems to speed up around them.

There are countless people — more than you know, more than you can see — navigating this same terrain quietly, thoughtfully, privately. And though you may not cross paths with them or recognise them in passing, your struggle belongs to a much larger human story than the one you’re telling yourself right now.

Feeling alone is not the same as being alone.

Support doesn’t always look like someone sitting across from you with warm words and a perfect understanding of your emotions. Sometimes support looks like the practices that keep you anchored — your journaling, your breath, your rituals, your stillness. Sometimes it’s the small pocket of time you give yourself each morning where no one else’s expectations can reach you. Sometimes it’s your tarot deck resting beside you — not the whole answer, not the solution, but a steadying presence reminding you that your inner world matters too.

And sometimes support is simply knowing that someone, somewhere, has walked this feeling before — and come out the other side with a deeper, softer relationship to themselves.

If the holidays are stirring up more than you expected, or asking more of you than you currently have to give, please don’t take that as a sign of personal inadequacy. It’s a reflection of the very real pressures, memories, and emotions this season can carry. You’re responding to something meaningful, not failing at something simple.

You are allowed to reach for support in whatever form feels accessible to you — a friend, a practice, a moment alone, a whisper of intuition, a card pulled at midnight, a therapist, a quiet walk, a cup of something warm. All of these count. All of these are valid ways to not be alone in your own experience.

You are part of a larger web of people doing their best with what they have this season. And your place in that web is held, even when you can’t feel it.

What Your Heart Might Need Right Now (And Permission to Ask for It)

If you’re struggling — in any shape, for any reason — there is something your heart is trying to tell you. Something quieter than the noise of the season, something easy to overlook when the world is busy and bright and loud. You might not know exactly what it is yet. That’s okay. You don’t need to name it perfectly for it to matter.

Maybe what you need most this week is rest. Not the performative kind, not the “take a bubble bath and feel instantly renewed” kind, but the real kind — where your body actually gets to let go a little, and you stop pushing yourself to function at 100% when your capacity has been sitting closer to 40 for weeks.

Maybe you need comfort, in a form that doesn’t require you to be cheerful in return. A warm drink you don’t rush through. A small ritual that reminds your nervous system it’s safe enough to soften. A quiet evening that doesn’t ask anything of you except to exist.

Maybe you need a boundary — a gentle one, a firm one, an internal one, an external one. This season can blur lines so easily that you forget where your energy ends and someone else’s begins. If your heart whispers “this is too much,” that isn’t selfishness; it’s information. Listening to it is an act of self-respect.

Maybe you need connection — not forced socialising or gatherings that leave you drained, but the kind of contact that feels like a lifeline. One person who texts back with warmth. One voice note from someone who really sees you. One moment where you allow yourself to reach out instead of withdrawing into silence.

Maybe what you need is permission — to feel how you feel, to not feel how you “should,” to care for yourself in ways other people might not understand. Permission to not pretend. Permission to move slowly. Permission to do less. Permission to want softness.

And maybe, in the middle of all this, you need a little companionship from your tarot deck — not for answers, not for predictions, but for presence. Sometimes pulling a card is simply a way of saying, “I’m here with myself. I’m listening.” Tarot doesn’t demand clarity. It doesn’t rush you into resilience. It becomes a quiet witness to your truth — a lantern rather than a map.

Whatever your heart is asking for, even if it’s subtle or confusing or inconvenient to name, I want you to know this: You’re allowed to need things. You’re allowed to ask for support. You’re allowed to prioritise your wellbeing even when the world feels like it’s accelerating around you.

And your needs — especially the tender ones — do not make you difficult, dramatic, or “too much.” They make you human.

Let Tarot Sit Beside You (Not Above You)

In a season where you might already feel pulled in too many directions — emotionally, mentally, energetically — the last thing you need is one more voice telling you what to do or how to feel. And the beautiful thing about tarot, when used with compassion rather than pressure, is that it never tries to take that role. It doesn’t stand above you with instructions or judgments. It sits beside you, quietly, without rushing you toward clarity you’re not ready to hold.

Your deck doesn’t expect you to be wise, centred, or emotionally balanced before you pick it up. It doesn’t need you to have a question formed. You don’t have to perform insight. You can sit with the cards exactly as you are — tired, uncertain, hurting, numb, or wrapped in emotions you can’t quite translate into words yet.

Sometimes the most healing way to use tarot during the holidays is simply to pull a card without asking anything at all. To let the image meet you where you are. To feel something stir — a thought, a softness, a flicker of recognition — without needing to interpret it perfectly. Tarot is fluent in the language of subtleties. It speaks in tone, in metaphor, in the gentle way a picture invites you into your inner world without forcing you to narrate it.

And if you don’t have the energy for tarot right now, that’s okay too. Its presence doesn’t disappear simply because you don’t engage with it. It remains part of your support system — one you can return to whenever you’re ready, whether that’s tomorrow, next week, or sometime in the new year when the world finally feels quiet enough to hear yourself again.

Think of tarot as a loyal friend who knows when to speak and knows when silence is the kindest response. A friend who doesn’t expect you to sparkle, doesn’t push you toward emotional progress, and never asks you to mask your truth. A friend who sits with you in your moment and says, “I’m here. You don’t have to figure this out alone. I’ll hold the lantern while you rest.”

You don’t owe tarot productivity or insight. You don’t owe your healing a timeline. You don’t owe the holidays a performance. You are allowed to let the tools you love support you in the softest, most spacious way possible.

A Gentle Note for the Days Ahead

As you move through the next few days — or the next few weeks, depending on how long this season echoes for you — I want you to remember that nothing about what you’re feeling right now disqualifies you from the goodness that wants to meet you. Not your sadness. Not your numbness. Not your overwhelm or your confusion or your lack of festive spirit. Not the ache you can’t name. Not the heaviness that arrives without warning. Not the moments where you’re doing your best just to get through the afternoon.

The holidays are not a test of emotional performance. They are not an evaluation of how healed you are. They do not measure your worthiness. And they do not require you to be anything other than human.

If the days ahead feel too loud, it’s okay to make space for quiet. If they feel too empty, it’s okay to reach for company that feels nourishing. If you’re grieving, let yourself grieve. If you’re tired, let yourself rest. If you need small joys rather than grand celebrations, honour that. If you need stillness more than sparkle, honour that too.

Your inner world gets to have a say in how you move through this time — not just the external rituals or expectations around you.

And if, at any point, the weight of everything becomes a little too much, remember that you do not have to carry it alone. You have your own wisdom, your own resilience, your own breath. You have people who care about you, even if you can’t feel their presence in this moment. You have practices that help you return to yourself. And yes — you have tarot, resting quietly within reach, ready to sit with you in whatever truth feels most alive today.

You are allowed to move gently. You are allowed to ask for softness. You are allowed to be exactly who you are, exactly as you are, without earning it.

So if you’re struggling this season, take this letter as a small offering of love, steadiness, and reminder:

You are not alone. You are not too much. You are not falling behind. You are not broken. You are loved. And you get to move through the holidays in the way that feels most honest and kind to you.

And if all you can manage right now is a breath, a pause, a place to rest your attention for a moment — let that be enough. Truly. Enough.

I’m here with you. Tarot is beside you. And the world is gentler than it feels today.

Ready to go deeper into healing and intentional growth through tarot? Explore The Healing Journey, our step-by-step guided experience for transformation.

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