Happy December, everyone! My birthday falls in December, which makes this month even more magical for me. I attempt to complete most of the work for the holiday season in November, so I can sink into the quiet and peace of December. I try to take some time off from work, in order to look back on the year and begin to look forward to the challenges and excitement of the next year. Plus, I adore the Christmas lights, the decadent food and drinks, and the chance to play games and make memories with my loved ones.
I used to be very busy and stressed in December when my kids were younger, but these last few years I’ve approached this month with a different mindset. How are you feeling as we approach the holiday season?
One-Word Feeling Check-In
How are you feeling right now, in one word? I’m feeling unsettled. My son leaves for university in early January, which means we will have an empty nest. I’ve tried to fill that void with a new kitten (Pip!) but in these major life transitions I think it’s important to take the time to feel everything associated with what this change means. For me, this means crying when I feel sad, and noticing when I feel grateful or even excited about what it might mean for Jason and me to be on our own again instead of having kids at the centre of our marriage and family life.
How are you feeling right now? If you take 3 deep breaths, and look inward for a moment, what emotion do you find there?
2025 Creative Nurture Retreat Update
For a long time now, I’ve dreamed of doing nurture retreats. But I’m also slowly growing my new company, and I can’t afford to pay a large deposit to hold my space at a retreat centre if I’m not confident I’ll be able to fill the spots.
I’ve tried to promote the May 2025 retreat for the last few months and I haven’t received any interest, so I’ve made the decision to shelve this dream for now. Maybe it’s not the right time for this venture. At Ruby Finch Books, my guiding principle is intuitive courage. I followed my intuition to try for this retreat, and now I’m listening that there isn’t enough interest in a nurture retreat right now. There’s room for all of these things to belong.
If you want to be added to my list for nurture retreats in the future, please get in touch! And keep reading for more on Nurture Starts with You in 2025!
Book Corner
December is a month where I tend to do a lot of re-reading, and I try to focus on Christmas-themed books if possible. I re-read Skipping Christmas by John Grisham, Christmas Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella, and I save possibly my favourite book of all, Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher, for the week before Christmas. If you like heartwarming family sagas set in Scotland, give Winter Solstice a read.
Because of how much I love Rosamunde Pilcher, I searched the keywords “Scotland, Bookshop, Christmas” at my local library and that’s how I came up with The Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan. This novel, set in Edinburgh in December in the falling snow, was charming and sweet and an ideal read while under a blanket looking at the Christmas tree.
I love Fiona Barton’s writing, so I was excited to read Talking to Strangers. This book packed a punch. It’s moody and atmospheric, with plenty of surprise twists and turns. What are you reading this holiday season?
Intuitive Courage Podcast
For episode 7, I talked about cultivating hope, because it’s something I needed to work through for myself. Lately, some key world events have had me down in the dumps, so I wanted to give myself a pep talk of sorts.
Cultivating hope feels like whistling in the dark, or lighting a single candle when everything around you is inky black. It’s a way of cheering ourselves up; of believing that goodness will prevail even when a mountain of evidence conspires to convince us that basic human decency has fallen out of fashion.
Please have a listen on December 21st to Cultivating Hope, wherever you get your podcasts.
Writing & Nurture Classes
I began the PLAN section of my newest online Write Your Novel or Memoir class in October, and it’s everything I ever dreamed an online class could be. Every week, we discuss a craft element, a process focus, a creative practice, and we do a one-word feeling check-in. We’re building a flexible online literary community together, and learning from one another while working on our own full-length writing projects. It’s inspiring, meaningful, and fun.
We still have a few spaces open, so if you want to join us on January 5th for the START section, this is your last chance until the next 20-week class begins in October 2025! Please reach out at julianne@rubyfinchbooks.com and come be part of our supportive literary community!
When I decided to cancel the nurture retreat, I thought I would try an online class called Nurture Starts with You to see if there’s any interest in learning how to make our own self-care a higher priority. This will be an online class in March, using the learning platform Canvas, and it will run for 5 days and cost $75. Details are at my website under Classes. Please reach out at julianne@rubyfinchbooks.com for more info or if you’d like to join us!
Process Notes
I haven’t written a lot in A Body at the Fair in November, as it seemed there was so much going on. I had a few health concerns that took some time and caused some stress, we brought a baby kitten home, Ava spent a few days here for fall break, and we’ve been getting William set up for his new dorm in January.
So much of writing is managing the teeter-totter range of feelings: despair when you aren’t putting words on the page, panic that the story and the characters are slipping away from you, a bit of shame that you aren’t making time for the work, and a sense of frustration that you are falling behind and not showing up for yourself and the story.
As we talk about in Write your Novel or Memoir, this goes with the territory of writing. Sometimes the words flow, and it feels like magic, and other times, a missed day or two (or twenty!) make you feel alienated from yourself and from the world you want to be creating on the page. I’m trying to be gentle with myself. Creativity is a faucet that can turn on and off. I have to trust that it will be there again when I make the time to sit down and jump back into the book I’m writing.
TV Recs
This month, Jason and I finished season 1 and 2 of Blue Lights and that BBC series is absolute perfection. Now I have a burning urge to visit Belfast! If you haven’t seen it, please find it on DVD at your local library or on Britbox. What a show.
Besides Blue Lights, we’ve been enjoying Rivals on Disney+ (a wild sexy romp through upper class England in the 80s), Resident Alien (a fun show about an alien crash-landed on earth who pretends to be a human that I worked on as an extra a few years back), and Man on the Inside on Netflix (Ted Danson plays a retiree who infiltrates a retirement community looking for a jewel thief). All three are fun and light and silly—ideal viewing in the darkest month of the year.
The Best Cats in the Universe: Ted & Pippin
We brought Pippin home on November 12th, and for the last few weeks he’s been giving us SO. MUCH. JOY. Ted struggled at first with the new arrival, hissing and even batting at Pip’s tiny little frame, but within 5 days Ted began washing Pippin, and very shortly they became the best pals we were hoping they would be.
Our vet said we should fatten him up by feeding him as much kitten food as he would eat, because he weighed 1.5 pounds at 8 weeks of age and we could feel his ribs and hip bones. We’ve gone through a lot of kitten food in the last month, but now Pippin has a lovely round Santa belly, and he’s filled with delicious kitten energy, and he chases his older brother Teddy around the house until he’s so tired he falls asleep wherever he is.
What a delight Pip has been. And Ted is a lot happier with some feline company around, just like Ava promised us. Ted is behaving like a kitten again, and as he’s only 4 years old this makes my heart happy. And now I have two amazing cats once more, to pour love and affection into when both kids leave our house in January.
Libraries forever (and Happy Holidays from our house to yours!),
Julianne and Ruby Finch Books