The Art of Continuing: How to Keep Your Routines During the Holiday Season
PODCAST · EPISODE № 005
Listen to the full episode:
The holiday season is beautiful — and it’s overwhelming. For many midlife women, this time of year brings a familiar pattern: holiday stress rises, routines disappear, self-care slips away, and by December, we’re running on empty. But what if the key to a calmer, more grounded season isn’t discipline… but self-trust?
In this episode, Dr. Oksana Skidan — writer, educator, and creator of the Create Your Midlife™ Method — explores The Art of Continuing™: a gentle, realistic approach to staying connected to yourself when life gets loud. Instead of abandoning your rituals, workouts, or morning quiet time, you’ll learn how to protect them with intention, compassion, and presence.
Drawing from her own life, Oksana shares why midlife women stop during the holidays, how “good girl” conditioning resurfaces, and the simple micro-practices that help you stay steady — not perfect, just present. You’ll walk away with tools to reduce holiday overwhelm, strengthen self-trust, and create a season that includes you.
This episode is for every woman who wants a calmer holiday rhythm, a softer pace, and a relationship with herself that stays strong in the busiest season of the year.
🧭 In This Episode:
• Why routines fall apart during the holidays — and how to protect yours
• The deeper emotional weight midlife women carry in November & December
• How good-girl roles, approval patterns, and perfectionism resurface
• The “Best Friend List” to decide what to keep for yourself
• Micro-practices you can continue anywhere — even on chaotic days
• The 3-Minute Rule that builds self-trust, not pressure
Useful Resources:
Subscribe to The Create Letter: https://oksanaskidan.com/newsletter
Explore The Midlife Method™: https://oksanaskidan.com/midlife-method
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Follow on Instagram @oksana_skidan_dr: https://www.instagram.com/oksana_skidan_dr
Transcript:
Oksana Skidan (00:00)
Before the holidays take over your time, your energy, and your entire calendar, I want to talk to you about something unexpected — and honestly, something we rarely talk about at all. Not starting, not restarting, not finishing… but continuing. The art of continuing, and the truth of “stop stopping.” I know — it sounds almost strange to call it an art, doesn’t it? But look around your life. Look around society, around culture, around how we celebrate things.
We praise beginnings. We praise endings. The start of a new year. The first day in a new house. The new project. The new routine. The new version of ourselves we announce on Instagram on January 1st. And then, once something is done, we celebrate finishing — closing a chapter, wrapping up a project, marking another birthday, concluding something.
But what about the middle? What about everything that happens between the beginning and the end? What about the part where you’re not excited anymore, but you’re not done either? What about the days where the motivation is gone, but the work still matters? That part — the part no one talks about — that is continuing. And if you think about it for a moment, that is where our entire life actually happens. Not in the highs of excitement, not in the celebrations, but in the quiet, ordinary, invisible middle.
And that’s why I call it an art. Because nothing about continuing is automatic or easy. It’s not glamorous, it’s not loud, it’s not something we post about or invite friends to celebrate with us. “Come over, I’m celebrating month three of continuing my morning walk.” We don’t do that. Maybe we actually should. Yet continuing is the only reason we grow, the only reason change happens, the only reason we become who we are becoming.
And here’s the truth: continuing is the hardest in midlife — and almost impossible during the holidays. At least this is what I’ve discovered, which is exactly why I chose this week, right before Thanksgiving and right before December begins, to talk about it with you. This is the moment when women start to disappear from their own lives — quietly, slowly, almost invisibly. Not because they don’t care. Not because they’re not committed. But because the season rises, the noise rises, the expectations rise — and their routines, their rituals, their self-care, their presence all begin to dissolve under the weight of everything else.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Because continuing in this season is not discipline — it’s self-trust, self-respect, self-agency. And it’s the one thing that will keep you connected to yourself when the world gets louder. So let’s talk about why continuing is so important right at this moment, right now, in this exact week of the year. Because if you’re feeling stretched, pulled in a hundred directions already, you’re not imagining it.
And this is the season when life speeds up, expectations multiply, and emotional history comes to visit. And that's exactly why most women stop. They don’t stop because they’re lazy. They don’t stop because they’re unmotivated. They don’t stop because they don’t care. They stop because life gets louder than their inner voice.
Think about it. Everyone wants something from you — your attention, your care, your presence, your decisions, your help. The end-of-year pressure starts to build: school events, deadlines, family gatherings, plans, emotional expectations, holiday decorations, holiday planning. And the holiday season brings its own set of triggers and memories — some beautiful, some heavy, some complicated.
And under all of this, your routines, your self-care, your rituals, and your time start to slip. Not because they’re not important, but because they’re quiet. And quiet things get drowned out by noise. This is the time when women begin to disappear from their own calendars. You see everything for everyone else, but you stop seeing yourself. Your morning walk disappears. Your journal sits unopened. Your quiet cup of coffee with a book gets replaced with rushing around. Your art, your breath, your peace — they all fall into the background, not because you choose it, but because this season pulls you.
And here’s the emotional truth: holidays activate old roles, old patterns, old triggers. You can be a grown woman with a full life, but the moment you step into a familiar home, hold a familiar ornament, smell a familiar dish, something in you softens back into the past. And the interesting thing is — the good girl wakes up. The approval seeker wakes up. The people-pleaser wakes up. And suddenly, continuing anything for yourself becomes the hardest thing in the world.
You find yourself saying yes when you wanted to say no. You over-extend, you over-give, you over-perform, you over-manage, you over-accommodate. And your own life goes quiet.
This is exactly why we're having this conversation right now. Because continuing is not about being strict. It’s not about discipline. It’s not about holding the perfect routine. Continuing is about staying present. It’s about not abandoning yourself. It’s about protecting the connection you’ve built with yourself all year long. And it’s about saying, “I’m still here. Even in the busiest season, I matter in my own life.”
This is the emotional foundation of today’s episode. And now that we've opened it, we can move into understanding why we stop — and how we can gently, intentionally, clearly continue forward this season.
Now, let's talk about why continuing becomes almost impossible during the holiday season, even for the most dedicated, organized, self-aware women. And let me say this clearly: nothing I’m about to say is judgment. Everything here is about understanding. Because when you understand why you stop, you’re no longer fighting yourself — you’re leading yourself.
So let’s name the real reasons, the ones women actually experience.
One of the top reasons I’ve found — in my life and in conversations with women — is that life simply takes over, fully and completely. When November hits, everything begins to pile up at the same time.
More school things, more work things, more emails, more errands, more decisions, more invisible responsibilities. And the truth is, your life does not pause just because the holidays arrive. Your routine responsibilities continue — and holiday responsibilities add on top. After all, you don’t stop going to work. You don’t stop taking your kids to school or taking care of your house, cooking meals, managing your days. You continue living your life. The holidays simply stack themselves on top.
So the very things that keep you grounded — your walk, your quiet moment, your morning ritual, your coffee with the book — get squeezed out first. Not because they don’t matter, but because they are the easiest things to sacrifice.
Another reason I’ve found is that you don’t put yourself on a schedule. This is one we all do. Women schedule everything: school runs, meetings, appointments, family events, holiday dinners, travel days, company parties. We schedule the whole world. But when you look at that schedule to find yourself… you won’t see her.
And if you are not on your own schedule, you disappear from your own life. This is one of the primary reasons women stop continuing — they simply don’t see themselves anywhere in their day.
The next reason is a tricky one and very dear to my heart because I realized I’ve been there myself — and to be honest, I can still be triggered back into it. Holidays reactivate the good girl conditioning. This is a big one for all of us. The holidays bring out the helpful girl, the agreeable girl, the responsible girl, the pleasant girl, the available girl.
Even if you’ve spent years unlearning these roles, this season activates them like a switch. Why? Because the environment is familiar. The traditions are familiar. The expectations are familiar. The people who remember you as you used to be are around you again. And without even realizing it, you slide back into saying yes faster than you would normally, taking on more than you should, over-accommodating, proving, performing, managing everything.
And when the good girl wakes up — your presence goes to sleep.
Alongside that, approval addiction rises during the holidays as well. It’s emotional, and it’s one of the things that spikes this season. Why? Because the holidays carry expectations, comparisons, tradition pressure, social pressure, family pressure — the desire to make everything nice. The urge to be appreciated.
You want people to like the meal. You want them to feel cared for. You want the house to look beautiful. You want everything to be just right. And approval — even the tiniest, silent nod — becomes part of the emotional load.
The cost? Your own routines. The very habits that keep you well get pushed aside.
Hand in hand with this comes perfectionism. And I don’t mean being a perfectionist in every part of life — I mean being a perfectionist for your people. The perfect holiday table, the perfect food, the perfect gifts, the perfect plan, the perfect mood, the perfect holiday experience. Be honest — you’ve already thought about at least one of those things, right?
And we drop our own routines because we believe, “I’ll just get everything perfect first… and then I’ll get back to myself.”
But perfection eats the entire month. If we look honestly, the calendar fills itself: Thanksgiving, the opening of the winter holidays, the actual holidays, New Year’s preparations. By the time we reach January 1st, we’re exhausted — drained by this picture-perfect world that doesn’t even exist, yet somehow we spend our whole season chasing it.
The holidays, as I mentioned, are also the time when all the triggers come back. The season is full of sensory memories — a song, a smell, an ornament, a dish, a room you walk into when you go back to the house where you were raised. Maybe a tone of voice that someone uses, one you’ve heard your whole life.
And suddenly, without warning, you’re not the woman you are today. You’re the younger version you used to be — the one who didn’t know boundaries, the one who didn’t trust herself, the one who couldn’t say no.
When old triggers rise, continuing anything for yourself becomes emotionally harder. Not logically — emotionally. And the unfortunate part is that we realize this too late — when we’re already tired, already overwhelmed, already stretched beyond our natural capacity to enjoy the rest of the season. And with that, emotional exhaustion creeps in.
We need to tell the truth here: during the holidays, women are tired. Not “I need a nap” tired — but the kind of tired that lives in our bones. The tired that comes from carrying everything, visible and invisible. This exhaustion makes continuing feel impossible — not because you lack discipline, but because you have carried too much for too long. And exhaustion, especially for women, always pushes self-care off the table first.
One of the most unexpected reasons continuing is hard — one I’ve discovered in the last few years — is that no one ever taught us how to continue. And this, I believe, is the root of so much.
We were taught how to start. We were taught how to perform. How to achieve. How to follow rules. How to be consistent for others. But no one taught us how to continue for ourselves. How to return after a break. How to adjust instead of abandon. How to stay with something gently rather than give up on it. How to continue again and again — not for approval, not for performance, but for our own dreams and goals.
And so when life gets busy, overwhelming, emotional, or just deeply familiar, when the old triggers wake up, we stop. Not because we are broken, but because we were never taught to continue, to keep our focus there, to keep moving forward for ourselves.
I have a very interesting example from my performance career. My music teacher back in Ukraine always told me, “If you ever have to make a mistake”—and of course nobody wants to make a mistake—“make it somewhere in the middle.” Her point was this: nobody pays attention to the middle. All the focus is on the beginning and the end. Those are the highlights of your performance. In the middle, people relax, they breathe, they drift, they think of their own lives. So if anything goes wrong, the middle is the safest place.
As I finish this list of reasons why we don’t continue around the holidays, there’s one more I want to name. It’s obvious, but we rarely look at it from this angle: the holidays are simply too loud. Everything is louder. Emotions are louder. Expectations are louder. Memories are louder. Responsibilities are louder. And loud seasons make women go quiet inside.
That’s why we stop. Not because we don’t care, not because we don’t want to continue, but because continuing requires presence. And presence requires space. And during the holidays, the season tries to take up every inch of that space.
Now I want to bring you into the heart of this conversation, because when it comes to continuing—especially through the holidays—we need to reframe something we’ve all been taught incorrectly. Most of us grew up hearing some version of this: If you want to continue, you need discipline. Discipline, willpower, consistency. Push through. Don’t miss a day. Do it right. Believe me, I heard plenty of this in my musical career.
And because of that, every time we stop, even for a day, we think we’ve failed. I lived like this for years. As a musician, discipline was the air I breathed. You practice whether you want to or not. You continue because you must. You continue because the deadline is there, the performance is there, the expectation is there. And for the most part, discipline worked—until it didn’t.
Discipline will get you through a practice room. Discipline will get you through college. Discipline will get you through a project. But discipline alone will not carry you through your life. And it definitely will not carry you through the emotional complexity of the holidays.
So here is the truth I want you to hear—and really let it land: continuing is not discipline. Continuing is self-trust.
Self-trust is the foundation. Self-trust is the emotional engine. Self-trust is the quiet yes inside your body that says, I will return to myself. I can rely on myself. I don’t abandon myself. I know what I need, and I am willing to honor it.
After all, I have myself.
Oksana Skidan (17:59)
What I personally found is that discipline demands, but self-trust supports. Discipline requires energy, while self-trust creates energy. Discipline needs structure. Self-trust asks you to listen. Discipline says, do it anyway. Self-trust says, do it in a way that honors you.
Self-trust says, even if I fell off yesterday, I can return today. Even if the holidays are loud, I can still hear myself. Even if I missed a week, I am still someone who continues. I trust myself enough to begin again. Self-trust is not perfect. Self-trust is present.
It’s not about strict schedules; it’s about honest check-ins. It’s not about doing it every day; it’s about staying connected to your why. Self-trust sounds like, okay, today was messy, but I’m still with myself.
Oksana Skidan (19:02)
So to me, continuing is not about holding everything together. Continuing is about holding on to yourself. When life gets louder, presence matters more. When demands grow, your rituals matter more. When expectations rise, your boundaries matter more. When the world speeds up, your clarity matters more.
Self-trust is the only reason we continue. And the holidays? They are the season where self-trust becomes your anchor. All you ever need to do is return—gently, clearly, intentionally—to yourself, to the mindset of I have myself. But returning requires tools—tools that help you stay present, move forward, and turn your ability to continue into an art.
So here are several of the tools that allow me to continue moving forward. Number one—and this is the one we’ve been talking about, but it still needs to be said again: schedule yourself first. This is the foundation. And yes, it sounds simple, maybe even repetitive for some of you, but the truth is, for women, this is the hardest thing in the world.
We schedule everything: school, work, errands, appointments, dinners, the dog’s haircut. Everything. But when you look at your calendar, you don’t see yourself anywhere. So here’s the rule: if you don’t put yourself on your own schedule, you disappear from your own life. And during the holidays, that disappearance happens fast. Every week, look at your calendar and ask yourself: Where am I? Where is your 10 minutes for yourself? Where is your walk? Where is the moment that is clearly yours?
And if you struggle to keep promises to yourself, schedule something that requires you to show up—something you simply cannot miss. A massage, a manicure, a class, an art session, a coffee with a friend, or even a coffee for yourself somewhere outside the house. Whatever brings you joy, but something you truly must show up for.
The second tool that I advise you to use is a fun one. I call it the Best Friend List. Again, very simple. Step one: make a list of your daily rituals and routines — everything that helps you stay sane, grounded, and present. For me, for example, it’s my morning coffee with a book. It can be fifteen minutes, it can be five, but I must have it. My art is the same — even ten minutes makes me feel connected to myself. Now imagine a close friend coming to you and asking, “Which of these should I keep during the holidays? And what can I let go of without losing myself?”
You would tell her the truth. You would protect her well-being. You would not let her disappear. And then — you follow your own advice. Because we treat friends better than we treat ourselves. This exercise brings you back to self-respect.
Another tool that works beautifully is micro-continuing. Make your continuations so small they cannot be abandoned. During the holidays, maybe it’s harder to get a full hour workout. Maybe the perfect journaling ritual — candles, music, your favorite chair — feels impossible.
So turn them into micro-practices. One page of journaling. Ten minutes of walking. Fifteen minutes of reading. Something small enough to complete, yet meaningful enough to keep you connected to yourself. Small does not mean insignificant. Small means sustainable.
Make what matters available. This is another part that sounds simple, but changes everything. If something is important for you to continue, it must be accessible. If journaling matters, your journal needs to be with you — not sitting on a shelf across the room. If reading matters, keep the book by your bed, in your bag, take it with you when you leave the house.
It’s incredibly simple, but it keeps your rituals alive through the busiest season of the year.
Another reason women don’t continue is because we become too rigid with our structure and our rules. And this is important. We stop because the original plan stops fitting, and we don’t give ourselves permission to adjust. But the truth is, your life changes every day. Your energy changes every day. Your needs change every day.
So continuing requires flexibility. Change the time. Change the duration. Change the way. Change the intensity. But do not change the commitment to yourself.
Oksana Skidan (24:40)
As we close this conversation today, I want to bring you back to something simple and powerful. You’re entering a season where life gets loud — where schedules tighten, where emotions rise, where expectations grow, where old roles and old memories meet the woman you are now.
And it’s in this season that continuing matters most. Not because you have to prove anything, not because you need to push, but because you deserve to stay with yourself — and with everything you’ve created for yourself this year. When the world gets louder, your relationship with yourself becomes more important, not less. Every time you return to yourself, you continue.
And every time you continue, you strengthen the bond with the most important person in your life: you.
So take a breath. Take one step. Choose your one thing. And let continuation be your quiet anchor through the season. With ease, with clarity, with presence, you can walk yourself through anything.
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