The Badass Way to Make Peace (Even When It’s Messy)
The holidays don’t create drama…they amplify what’s already there.
The holidays are a cluster fuck of family, friends, feelings, expectations, Hallmark joy … and conflict. The truth is that the season rarely matches the version we imagine it should be. In between the glossy good times come the gritty ones that smack you sore.
It’s not as if the holidays magically create drama or healing. They simply shine a spotlight on whatever was already simmering beneath the surface. Old scripts show up. We slide back into the roles we’ve always played. With unresolved hurts greeting us like an icy blast of arctic cold, we often brace for impact and tell ourselves we’re “protecting the peace.”
But what if that’s the worst thing we can do for the people we supposedly love?
The Soul Loves a Good Conflict
I didn’t consciously choose the situations unfolding in my life this year, but oh did I manifest. Badassery is the playground of the soul. How so? Because the more you practice the methods, the more you manifest. The soul loves that kind of collaboration. It says, “Oh, you’ve mastered Lesson A? Great. Here comes Lesson B.”
The souljourn summons the exact curriculum we need. And apparently my soul loves bigly lessons and the bigly feels. So, this year it delivered a crash course in seeing the difference between protecting peace and building peace. It was the pivot I didn’t know I needed.
Conflict, that powerful, annoying source of growth, isn’t born out of what’s happening between us but out of the places inside us where we resist change. We cling to the pain, the past, the story, or the control, and that’s when resentment begins to grow. Not when something happens, but when we refuse to let life evolve.
When old wounds flare in the people you love most
That’s what I’m learning from the situations in my life right now. People close to me are wrestling with raw hurts, resentment, and disappointment of their own, and the pressure of the holidays brought it to the surface. Words became sharp, assumptions flared, and the conversation turned into a collision of past and present, the kind of exchange that sends you into self-protection mode before you even know what you’re reacting to.
It wasn’t just one moment or one person. It was a series of interactions with people I care deeply about that bruised my heart and buckled my knees. Old patterns, unspoken expectations, and the weight of transition showed me how fragile relationships can feel when everyone is holding their own fear. I found myself face to face with wounds I thought I had outgrown, and with the truth that even the most loving intentions don’t always prepare us for the impact of change.
Avoiding conflict creates distance
So here’s the uncomfortable truth staring at me in the mirror along with new greys and a furrowed brow. Avoiding conflict didn’t protect peace. It actually created distance and made the unspoken louder and the resentment deeper. Now I’m standing in the middle of the storm, figuring out how to open hearts and build peace, the badass way.
Opening the heart the Badass way
It gets worse. For someone who teaches appreciation, who built an entire life and body of work around it, who knows how transformative it is, this was the exact moment I fell off my own practice. Not just a little, but for days which feels like an eternity when needed most. Instead, I wasn’t appreciating the people I love, the moment I was in, or the transformation against which I was reacting, bracing and armoring against.
Out of my element, out of my center
I do know better. I just let my hypervigilant judge temper tantrum louder than my sage. I give myself grace, though, being out of my element, traveling from our new home in Texas to our old life in California, living out of bags, sleeping in an Airbnb, juggling time changes and family dynamics and the emotional logistics of being in a place that used to be home but no longer holds my heart.
There was no familiar rhythm to anchor me. It felt like the ground underneath my feet was moving faster than my nervous system could catch up, and appreciation requires space. It requires breath. It requires the kind of presence that’s hard to access when you’re in motion, tending to crises, fielding emotional landmines, and trying to hold yourself together long enough to make it through another day without collapsing into tears or rage.
Appreciation isn’t a luxury…it’s a lifeline
So I didn’t step into appreciation, not because I didn’t know how, but because I didn’t have the emotional bandwidth for it. My nervous system defaulted into protection mode. I armored up. I went into fight or flight mode. I forgot that appreciation is the thing that brings me back to center when everything around me feels too much.
And that’s when I saw it clearly. Peace isn’t the absence of conflict or discomfort. Peace is what happens when we stay connected to ourselves and to each other in the middle of it. Peace isn’t passive. It’s active. It’s built. It’s chosen again and again and again.
Words can close the heart or open it
And that brings me to the thing that keeps circling in my head, this one line that has followed me for years, a Bee Gees lyric from way back when: it’s only words and words are all I have to take your heart away. I’ve always loved that line. I used to think of it as romantic, like words have the power to bring us closer if we say the right ones. But lately I keep seeing the other side of it. Words can take a heart away, too. Words can open the heart or shut it down. Words can draw us near or send us packing. It isn’t the words themselves. It’s the condition of the heart that receives them.
We open the heart by choosing connection
We open the heart not by avoiding conflict but by meeting it.
We open the heart not by protecting our peace but by building it.
We open the heart by choosing appreciation when fear wants us to shut down.
Peace is something we practice
So maybe the holidays aren’t a test of who can stay calm and avoid the blowups. Maybe the holidays are a test of how willing we are to stay connected in the face of all the reasons we want to run. Peace isn’t something to protect, it’s something we create by showing up with our hearts open, in the mess and when it’s hard.
As hard as they are, I want these situations, these badass teachers, teaching me the beautiful difference between closing the door and keeping it cracked open to let the light in. They’re teaching me that mindful, authentic, badass appreciation from the heart, not the head, is the path back home, to myself, to the people I love, and to the version of the holidays I want to believe in.
That’s where the healing begins and the holiday magic grows.
