Twelve Days of Christmas - A Partridge in a Pear Tree

As the holidays wrap us in their familiar embrace, I find myself navigating a sea of emotions that many of us know all too well. In this heartfelt reflection, let me take you on a journey through the joys, the stresses, and the poignant absences that shape our yuletide celebrations. My personal narrative intertwines with a special 12-day series of episodes, each a beacon intended to light the way toward finding renewed meaning in our cherished traditions and the closing chapter of another year. Together, let's explore the symphony of Christmas music that has become a thread in the fabric of my family life, and I'll share why it matters so much.

Stepping into the realm of sustainability, I recount the spark that ignited my eco-conscious voyage—a simple garden compost. This week's discussion unveils the surprising cascade of choices that followed, from a dramatic reduction in plastic bag usage to embracing glass over plastic. I draw a parallel between these modest, personal shifts and their potential to ripple outwards, influencing greater change. As we unwrap the symbolism of the "12 Days of Christmas," I invite you to reflect on the themes of protection, nurturing, and the abundance that growth brings, just as I have. Woven into our conversation, these themes serve as an undercurrent, challenging us to consider the impact of our own protective layers and the nurturing we grant to others and ourselves.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

You're listening to the what Women Want Today podcast. If you love the idea of being part of a community of women who are looking to thrive, not just survive, you're in the right place. Join hosts Terry Cullums and Amanda Keeper each week, as they bring you topics and guests to help you improve your relationships, your health and your emotional and spiritual well-being.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Hello, welcome to this week's episode of the what Women Want Today podcast. I'm your host, terry Cullums, and it's Christmas time and we are all busy, crazy, trying to do these last minute things, and I am right there with you. Christmas means a lot of things for different people. For some people, the holidays bring a ton of stress. I've already talked to a few people today that are sharing stories of things that are going on right now this time of year, at Christmas time, and so I know the holidays are a mixed bag for a lot of us, and personally I will share with you that my struggle is I don't live close to my adult children, so I don't get to spend very many holidays with my adult children, and my mom is gone and Christmas was always very special to her, so it can be really tough for me to make meaning out of the holiday without the feelings that I got when I was younger and when my kids were younger. And nothing stays the same right, nothing. We can always count on change, and the holidays are just. I'm struggling to put my finger on what makes it meaningful for me, and so I'm sure I'm not alone in that.

Speaker 2: 1:54

However, today I want to introduce a special series that I'm going to do over the next 12 days. They're just going to be short episodes that are meant to be thought provoking and that you can take something actionable away from, to reflect on, to journal on, to consider for the upcoming year. But I want to start with letting you know that I I love Christmas music. I think I've said that in the last couple of episodes at least once. I love Christmas music and I feel like it has its own season from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas day, and I've always loved Christmas music. When my daughters were young, I would help them create like little dances that they could like perform for the family at Christmas time, and we've always me and my daughters have always enjoyed listening to Christmas music in the car and singing our favorite parts. And just every time you put up your Christmas tree, you know you always have the Christmas music on and you're always singing and it's just Christmas music, just is. I don't even know where I got the love of it from because I don't remember my mom playing it a lot, but I've always had a love for it and it's only intensified over the years as I've become an adult. And also some flowers about the same size between dinner and dinner that I'd picked. When I was a leader at the insurance company I worked for, we would really make the holiday special. We would always do things to make it seem fun to be at work around the holidays decorated and just all sorts of little activities that we would play on. One year we acted out the 12 Days of Christmas as a little skit during our meeting where a lot of people got to come and gather together.

Speaker 2: 3:42

I hadn't thought about the 12 Days of Christmas specifically, you know, on its own in quite a while. Then something happened. The other day I got a Christmas letter from a friend, a couple that Brian and I are friends with, that don't live close to us, that we don't get to talk to very often. She had kind of chronicled the things that they had done, the highs and lows of the year. She put it together really beautifully and I really loved it. It inspired me to think about the 12 Days of Christmas.

Speaker 2: 4:19

I got to be honest with you. I always thought the 12 Days of Christmas were the 12 days leading up to Christmas, but it turns out that the 12 Days of Christmas begin on December 25th. I am going to release these episodes in this series that I'm doing. I'm going to try really hard I know it can get hectic or leaving on Saturday for Phoenix I'm going to try really hard to release one every day so that you just have a little bit of something every day. They're not going to be long, they're not going to be overly complicated concepts that I want to talk to you about, or the 12 Days of Christmas, but I thought it would be a little bit fun.

Speaker 2: 5:00

I had a friend who told me about something that she does, that it kind of like played into what I wanted to talk to you about today, which is, she said, at the end of the year, she always looks back and reflects on the year. She looks at her goals and she asks herself what goals did I accomplish If I didn't accomplish them? Are they something I want to continue to try to work on for the next year? I don't remember all the specifics of hers, but it is inspirational to me that we can take time at the end of a year to kind of reflect back on the year and celebrate and think about all the things that were awesome about the year, but also the things that were challenges Like what can we learn from them? What are our takeaways?

Speaker 2: 5:48

I love the expression that life is not happening to me, it's happening for me. So what did these particular challenges do for me? What do they teach me? What lessons can I bring away from that experience and apply it to my life in a way that's going to move me forward? And so I thought that's what today would be about. It would be about reflecting on the past year, and if you're someone who journals, I don't know you might be interested in going back and looking at some of your thoughts that you wrote down. If you're not, I love looking at my photos. You know I have Apple phone and you get those memories that pop up all the time and I just I love looking at them and I love sharing them with the person that's in the picture or with Brian and my husband, and just kind of like talking about the memory for a little bit.

Speaker 2: 6:39

So I know that this year for me well, I'll say this like last year, it was about this time I believe that I thought I am going to bring on a co-host for the podcast. I want to bring some fresh perspective, some some new energy into the podcast. I'm going to look for a co-host and I brought on Elizabeth and she was with me for I don't know you remember how many episodes Not a ton, maybe 12. She was with me for a short time and then I ended up bringing on my friend, amanda, and we've had a lot of fun and but I've learned some lessons. I've learned some things about myself through the process of trying to collaborate and coordinate life with another person, and it's not easy.

Speaker 2: 7:25

But one of the things I did take away from my time with Elizabeth is that she was an author and she was really excited. I don't know if you guys remember about the book challenge that she wanted to do and she brought that to us, introduced that into our lives, early in the year this year. So at first I thought I was going to write a whole different kind of book than Then what I ended up working on. So I did end up. I didn't go through with the challenge as far as the way she wanted to run it through the Facebook group and everything our private community but I did take steps and it started around. I played around with some different ideas and took some different classes online and I think it was about July where I got really serious about it and worked with a book coach and he really helped me understand how you go about researching a book that someone's going to want to read. And I'd have to say, between him and some of the conversations I would have with Amanda because she is a leadership trainer, some of those conversations really reignited in me what I've been missing from my corporate job Just that, that leadership aspect.

Speaker 2: 8:43

And so the book I'm working on I had hoped I really was making a push to get it out by the end of the year and you know, things just don't always happen in our time. Things don't happen the way we want them to. They don't go smoothly all the time. And so am I going to look back? I'm not going to get the book out before Christmas, but am I going to look at that particular aspect of this past year and say I failed? I'm definitely not, because I'm probably gosh. I wish I could think of a percentage to apply to it. It's complicated.

Speaker 2: 9:17

I am in the editing process of the book. I'm in the process of choosing a book cover design. I've got it narrowed down to about two. So am I going to look at it as a failure because I didn't get the book accomplished this year. No, I mean, writing a book is. I will forever look at authors and have a whole different level of respect for them than I already do. I mean, I've always been an avid reader but I've never really thought about it from the perspective of the process it takes to write a book. So I've learned a lot this year. I've had a lot of very frustrating moments where I just wanted to bang my head against the desk, but I've grown from it. So when I'm looking, when I'm going to redo my own reflection on this year, I am going to look at that as a win. I'm going to put that in the win column Because I will have the book out early next year and it still will be very timely for those that I intend to be my audience, and so that's one aspect of it.

Speaker 2: 10:30

And I mean, if you've been following me on social media, I haven't talked about it too much on the podcast, but if you've been following me on social media, you might have learned that we got in a car accident or a motorcycle accident and they found during the CAT scan they found a thyroid nodule which I had to have biopsy to check for cancer and then Brian had a skin cancer scare and most recently in fact, I just got the results on Tuesday I had to go in for a surgery and during that surgery they did a biopsy and that came back cancer-free.

Speaker 2: 11:05

So I also had a lot of health challenges this year, which you know, if you look at it from. You know, was that life happening to me or happening for me? It led me to a whole set of choices about my health that have moved me in an entirely new direction, and I hope to talk about that on the podcast in the next year. So I'm gonna look at my health goals as a win. I started out like one of my. I don't make resolutions, but one of the things that I said that I wanted to do to be a better human for the planet is I was using an insane amount of like plastic storage bags.

Speaker 2: 11:49

Like you, know, sandwich bags and quart size bags and gallon size bags. And I have this terrible habit I'm wondering if you can relate to this. I have this terrible habit of I don't want to waste food. So no matter what amount of food it is it's usually not always huge I will store it in the fridge, only to turn around the next week when I get ready to go to the grocery store and throw that food away. And Brian and I had watched a documentary on Netflix and it was all about like how much food goes into our landfills and how much methylene gas it produces and just the amount of food waste that we have in the world, not just America, but it is just astounding. So I'm like well, I, this is what I'm gonna do for the planet. This is, I'm gonna further reduce my food waste.

Speaker 2: 12:41

I have a composter. Sits on my well, did sit on my counter. It just takes up a lot of space on my little tiny counter, but I did buy a composter. If you're interested in finding out what that is, go over to our Facebook group and, you know, ask me about the composter. Feel free to DM me on Instagram. Send an email at www. The number two day podcast at gmailcom. That link is in our show notes. I'll be happy to share the composter that I use. But what I do is I save food scraps and once, maybe sometimes twice, a week, I will run my little composter and it turns my food waste into compost that I can use for our you know, vegetable garden or houseplants or outside flowers, rose bushes, all that kind of stuff. So that was my contribution to food waste and and lightning the load on the planet.

Speaker 2: 13:37

The use of the plastic bags. I have not bought a brand new container. I still have the ones I had from last year in my drawer. I can't say I didn't use one all year, because I know I did, but I drastically I'm going to guess about 90% reduced my use of plastic baggies and that had a ripple effect because after that I started saying to myself okay, well, you know, I'm reducing my plastic bag usage. What is the impact on these plastic bags anyway?

Speaker 2: 14:10

And then I started learning about BPAs and forever chemicals and I switched all my food storage to glass. So now I'm storing things in glass. I'm taking, like we go through an insane amount of, like pickles and almond butter or cashew butter, those types of things that are in glass glasses. We use those kind of things a lot. So anything that I have that's a glass container, I recycle it, I send it through my dishwasher, I make sure it's nice and clean, I use it for food storage.

Speaker 2: 14:43

So you know, little things can have a big effect, like, think about, think about and if you're on YouTube watching me, you know I always have to talk with my hands but think about a pond, like a very, still, very calm pond. Now think about if you throw a rock, if you toss a rock out into that pond and it makes all those little ripples. So one small rock, it makes ripples. One tiny change that you decide to do can lead to other smaller changes, which ends up being a bigger effect. So the plastic bags, the food storage, led me to looking at other single waste use products that I use, like the cotton pads we use to take our makeup off or apply toner. I've switched to reusable ones that I wash once a week. I you know I can't think of a great replacement for Q-Tips, even though I don't use a lot of them, but I've cut down on that. Like all these little things, they make an impact.

Speaker 2: 15:47

You know, have you guys ever heard that story about the boy walking along the beach that's, you know, throwing the I think it was starfish throwing the starfish back into the, into the ocean. And he was walking with his grandpa and his grandpa said you know, you're not going to make a difference, You're just one person. There's thousands of them. And he said, well, I made a difference to that one and that's kind of how you know, I approached my, my sort of intention for the year, my goal for the year to to reduce my use of plastic bags, is I'm just a, I'm just a small rock in a big pond, but if I can influence someone else to also make changes, then my ripple becomes bigger. My, my reach has expanded beyond just that pond, right?

Speaker 2: 16:34

So that's what I'm going to ask you to think about today, on the day of the birth of Christ. Consider it like a rebirth or a new birth. And I also thought it was interesting to look up the, the definition of the 12 days of Christmas. So the partridge in the pear tree is the first day of Christmas and it it says it represents protection and nurturing, while the pear tree symbolizes growth and abundance. So I want you to think about protective elements in your life and the growth you've experienced over the past year.

Speaker 2: 17:18

That's all I have for you today, on the on the first day of the 12 days of Christmas. If you celebrate, I wish you a very merry Christmas. If you don't, that's okay too. Have your own day in your own way, and I'm glad you joined me and I will see you all tomorrow for the second day of the 12 days of Christmas. Have a wonderful day, and I hope you had a wonderful day spending it with family or those that you love. Take care. See you next time. Amanda, I don't know if this ever happens to you, but I sometimes will learn something really cool on a podcast, on a YouTube video, audiobook, whatever. I think I'm going to remember it and then I forget. Does that ever happen to you?

Speaker 3: 18:01

Yeah, I call it brain after 40 all the time.

Speaker 2: 18:04

That's what we'll officially call it, but we've come up with something. Do you want to introduce it?

Speaker 3: 18:09

Sure, it's by. It's from an app called quick Jim quick, and it's an acronym called fast.

Speaker 2: 18:15

Yeah, and the F it stands for Facebook. So we're inviting you officially right now to come over and join us on Facebook. Get involved with the community, share your favorite episodes with your friends on Facebook.

Speaker 3: 18:26

Yeah, the A is go ahead and take an action, so you can't remember anything if you don't act.

Speaker 2: 18:32

And S is for subscribe. Make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel.

Speaker 3: 18:36

And then T is teach. Teach what you've learned to somebody else. Share the love.

Speaker 2: 18:41

All right, we hope that works for you. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next week.

Speaker 3: 18:45

Bye, bye.