I included an insert in my card this year, and thought I’d include the text here. If you received one in person, feel free to skip this first part!
Last year’s holiday card marked 25 years of card making, and was designed to usher in a new year full of celebratory milestones. I celebrated those dates throughout the year – nice round numbers marked silver or golden, graduation milestones, extra sweet birthdays. Once I started noting them, I kept noticing new ones.
I struggled a lot in August and September when I realized that my initial card idea for this year wasn’t as relevant at the end of the year as I thought it would be at the start. I was purchasing a birthday card for my nephew in September when I thought I’d go ahead and find one for my oldest niece (25!) in October, and then my littlest niece (10!) in November. It was then that I realized my niece Anna Pryor – the only baby other than my own that I’ve seen come into this world – was turning 20 on December 7th! And that’s when a new idea started to fall into place.
I designed and mostly assembled Anna Pryor’s birth announcement before she was born, with just the important arrival details left to fill in. Because she was expected to arrive in early December, I tied the design into the holiday season as well. I cut out cards of thick watercolor paper and punched holes for pink embroidery thread that would “sew” a tree garland and star topper. I templated the overlay on a shimmery pearl paper, and once I could print it, I cut out the partial silhouette of an evergreen tree on the side to reveal the threaded design. I loved it so.
I pulled that announcement out and knew right away what I wanted to celebrate. I’ve had plenty of cards that incorporated my girls when they were little – but what I didn’t know at the time was just how incredible it would be to have all these amazing big kids in our family. I read her birth announcement again, and there it was – these words: what joy!
Throughout the years, I think my cards have really been a study of what joy is – where it’s shown up and where it’s hidden, how it is steeped in abundance, when it has fled.
I would start there – what joy! it is to be amazed each day by my kids and my nieces and nephew. I’d take that edge of a tree idea and decorate it with symbols from cards of celebrations and artwork that I’ve made for each of them throughout the years.
I would build this tree out of cut paper branches like the ones I cut a dozen years ago for Erin, but instead of evergreen, I’d do shimmery shades of white like that announcement. I’d fill the trees with sparkly ornaments which have become a symbol of the continued good work that is done in Erin’s memory. I cut thousands of branches in early October, ready for fringing. In mid-October Marcus lost his brother, and we found ourselves on that familiar drive to be with family – a dark and quiet road, the sound of scissors to keep my hands busy and heart still – what joy? what joy? what joy?
I often turn to poetry when I’m trying to connect the dots, and when I returned to this poem by Ada Limón, there it was – these words; I thought you might like a copy of it:
Instructions on Not Giving Up
Ada Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
If I can’t yet decorate my own tree, I’ll cut out thousands of ornaments for you. I will revel in the baubles and trinkets of memory, of love, of exuberance, of passion, of grief. I’ll continue to practice gratitude in the mess, take delight in the details, and find patience with the work. And you can always find me on cold gray morning walks in the late winter garden – waiting, watching, unfurling. Walk with me.
with joy,
Kristin, Marcus, Ella & Frances
…………………………………
I don’t want to share too much about my previous idea because I think I may develop it a little more for a future one. It definitely had a tree theme & a house theme, and when I realized that it wasn’t going to work this year it was really just the icing layer of disappointment on a multi-layered frustration cake. For all of the celebrations and milestones that this year brought, there was an equal or greater amount of challenge and sorrow.
I’ve been around for fifty years now, and I can say with absolute certainty that the last year and a half of those have been the most difficult. We have had years marked with tremendous joy, especially those years where our family has grown and flourished. And we’ve had years marked with tremendous grief, the stress of illness and decline or the sudden shock of loss that turned everything on its head.
But the reality is this – it is never a simple curve up or curve down from some neutral line. We’re never just cresting that enormous wave, sun-warmed and salt-dusted, stomach plunging like the thrill of a coaster drop. We’re never just churning in the depths, fighting the pull of the undertow, lungs burning with the strain. We are always both.
I’ve never faced this duality head on like I have in the past year.
I know how to celebrate. I’ve crafted the invitations and thrown the parties and sliced some of the most joyful cakes a lucky person can know in this life. The words come easily to me in these moments; I write notes and letters and poems and wish lists awash in gratitude and joy.
I know how to grieve. I’ve logged the miles on the trails and listened to the howl in my chest and cried in the presence of things both beautiful and mundane. The words come easily to me in these moments as well; they may stick in my throat at first, so I cut them out of paper and hold them together with glue.
I am going to gift myself the idea of a long life, which lets me put myself at the midpoint now. In the first half of my life I think I aspired to that neutral line. If things were going well then I must be enjoying a nice afternoon on a sturdy inflatable raft. It’s gently bobbing along during low tide, with water so clear and shallow that nothing scary can lurk below, unseen. But now I’m here in this middle years space, and I’m so overwhelmed with this idea of both, that I can’t even see the neutral. It’s not that I can’t imagine achieving it anymore, it’s that I’m not sure how I ever thought that it was even a possibility.
I’m so good at riding out the high-highs and the low-lows. But friends, I’m not so good in the both. The words do not come easily to me; the inadequate phrase I keep repeating is I just don’t know where to land. How do I hold the excitement of a long awaited renovation project in the same space with the cruelty of the dreadful daily news? I start each morning with an armful of flowers in the same body that watched the wind take out whole neighborhoods around us in seconds. I weep with joy at my daughter’s art hanging on gallery walls; how will she compete against a machine we can no longer even detect? It’s 80 in November! / OMG, it’s 80 in November. Can you stand back and look at this latest row of flooring (of siding, of insulation, of painted bricks…) and feel such an intensity of pride and frustration and accomplishment and despair at the very same time? Fist bump in the air – f^&* yeah!! / Fist raised in the air – F&*# this!!
Where do I land?
Whew, turning 50 is no joke. If you’ve made it this far, you are my people, and you’ll gladly give me the space for some cursing in a holiday letter. I thank you for that.
I know this is just a simple card with part of a tree. But to me it’s really about grappling with the both. What joy it was to watch these kids come into the world, to watch them grow and change and learn. It’s a gift I do not take for granted. But with each new milestone that tension between joy and loss increases. Holding such intense pride at Ella’s college graduation in the same body that’s holding such intense grief at the end of this tether to home – to me – has been more than I can process in real time. Holding such intense love for the Frances that continuously shows up for others in the same body that has this intense longing for time to slow down – please – has been a tension I struggle to release.
I pictured this paper tree with dense branches loaded down with ornaments and dripping with silver and gold tinsel. I started with the pink bird from F’s birth announcement, and a bronze one to match for my nephew who is the same age. I wanted to fill it with ornaments shaped like the ones I used on that other card that was dedicated to Erin. I searched for a couple of weeks before I found a vintage punch in the UK, and had it shipped to me. I found paper that looked like mercury glass in shades of silver and rose gold. I added butterflies from E’s high school graduation party invites, starfish from our family trips to the beach, and stars from the watercolor names I did for my older nieces’ nurseries when they were born. I filled it with sparkle – silver and gold to mark special dates and anniversaries, and pink glitter and tiny twinkly stars for my littlest niece. The overarching color scheme of pinks and browns was inspired by the nursery I helped to build for my niece – a color scheme that I’ve recently revisited in the joyful kitchen transformation by a dear friend.
I’ve had conversations with this friend about the push and pull of the minimalist and maximalist. I have always considered myself more of the former, and she most definitely falls into the latter. What I’m realizing more and more with each day is that I am both. When I find something that I love, I go all in. If it feeds me, it becomes a ritual I hold tight to. If I want flowers, I don’t let space or energy limit my investment. I design a card of one, without letting 130 talk me out of any detail.
I took an early prototype of my card to show my therapist. I had this glittery tree packed with trinkets and baubles, and I liked it – it was getting close to what I thought I wanted. And then I had a few overlays that I was testing out as a protection for the card while it was in route. I pulled those out as an afterthought, but she noticed something. She asked me what I felt when I looked at the card – and I told her that I still felt a little tension. I wanted this tree to be a lot – but sometimes a lot can be too much for me. I placed the overlay on top, and admitted that I liked it even more with the vellum. The details start to blur, and the abundance recedes. I have given myself permission to feel all of the things, and to resist the urge to edit. And then I have allowed myself to step back, dim the lights, and reduce the noise. I’m not sure this is the landing place, but I want you to know that I’m still looking for it, still working through it. I’m still hopeful. I’m still here.
I hope that 2026 brings us opportunities to release some of this tension, and to repair. I hope it brings you joy. And I hope we get a chance to share in it.
Happy Holidays to you and yours.
– Kristin