Welcome to Prologs. My name is Mary, and when I get overwhelmed and start feeling behind, I find it helpful to zoom out and remind myself that I am still in the beginning of my story. I'm sharing all of my life's chapters, mental health, relationships, wellness, beauty, the chaos of being in my 20s, and all of life's unexpected turns. Prologs is the best way to start

your week, so join me every Monday morning for a new entry into my digital journal.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Prologs. It's the first Christmas episode

of the podcast ever, and I'm so excited. I'm a huge Christmas person and if you celebrate Christmas, I feel like

no one can deny that it's officially Christmas time. I used to put up my Christmas decorations at the

start of November because I really didn't like Thanksgiving. But somehow as an adult and as I've

enjoyed spending time with my family more and more. I've really come to enjoy going home

for Thanksgiving. And so now I do wait until after. But I'm ready. I'm putting up my Christmas

decorations this weekend. I wish I'd done it last weekend, which was the first weekend after Thanksgiving,

but we were traveling back to Arlington VA from my parents' house, so I just didn't get around to it.

So Christmas decorations

are going up this weekend. I've been making loads of plans for December with friends, with loved

ones, to just enjoy the holiday. I will say that I feel like in my adult years, I have had to work

to recapture the feeling of Christmas magic that I felt as a kid. And I think that's a

really common experience. If you Google, like, why doesn't Christmas feel like Christmas anymore?

Or you like go on TikTok and you search that, there are so many people talking about feeling that

loss of Christmas magic and Christmas doesn't feel like Christmas anymore. And I think there's so many

reasons why that can be the case. There's the fact that you miss the nostalgia from your youth and you know

you'll never experience that again, more responsibilities and less free time, complicated or

bad relationships with families, bad memories, increased mental health issues or stress. Like,

there's so much that can happen during this time of year that can take away from the feeling

of enjoying the holiday. And I felt like that for a long time and I would get really sad every

...