S2: Happyish Holidays: The Last Christmas (feat. Alyssa Limperis)

We’re back with our third annual Happyish Holidays episode! This year, comedian Alyssa Limperis shares with us the holiday letter she wrote the year her dad died from brain cancer. We talk with Jay Mathews, a 48-year-old father and son who, with stage IV cancer, is probably experiencing his last holidays with his family. And we ask listeners what they took away from 2018, what they’re looking forward to in 2019, and what it is about hoping for something that can be so scary.

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Come see the Happyish Holidays Live Show: A Petty LIttle Christmas at The Parkway Theatre in Minneapolis on December 4th and 5th, or join the livestream on December 5th!
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It’s the most wonderful time of the year… um, but is it really? The holiday season can be complicated. Sometimes instead of cozy nights with hot cocoa and meaningful moments, we get tears, ruined plans, and nights spent hiding in the bathroom at family parties. If the holiday season hasn’t always lived up to your expectations, join us for Happyish Holidays, a collection of holidays gone wrong presented by Terrible, Thanks for Asking. Happyish Holidays to you and yours!

 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

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I’m Nora McInerny.

And this is Happyish Holidays from the American public media podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking. If you haven’t listened to our podcast, you can probably tell from the title that it’s about science. I’m kidding.

It’s a podcast about feelings, pretty much. It’s a podcast about your real feelings, not just the happy face you put on for everyone when your life is falling apart. Today we’re talking about the holidays.

And today I am your ghost of past, present, and future. I’m walking you through the holidays of yesteryear, today year, tomorrow year. Does that sound correct?

But we start, just like in therapy, with the past. Alyssa Limperis grew up with a dad who was the absolute best. No offense to your dad, but Mr.

Limperis was fantastic.

And he wrote amazing letters every Christmas, letters that would accompany the Christmas card and give a thorough and lighthearted update to every recipient, leaving them fully informed on the goings on in the Limperis household.

But now, Alyssa’s dad is dead, because cancer, and there’s nobody to fill her dad’s letter writing shoes. Or is there? We asked Alyssa to write the honest Christmas card letter to reflect that first year after her dad’s death.

To really give everyone a taste of what the holidays are like without one of the people you love the best.

And ho, ho, ho!

Well, it’s been another banner year in the Limperis household. 2015 gifted us with consistently worse new dawns piled delicately on top of each other, creating a record-setting level of stress. We did it!

We broke a record!

Yeah!

While 75% of the Limperis clan went unemployed this calendar year, we managed to do more work than we thought humanly possible.

Yes, each day was packed to the brim with sadness, debilitating anxiety and even extensive efforts to help dad feel a little bit better in the face of stage 4 brain cancer. We spent the better part of the year up north at our second home.

Oh, we love it! The hospital, Dana Farber. But we managed to find some moments for ourselves there as well.

Alyssa was a busy bee. She had wanted a puppy for as long as she could speak. And this year, she finally got her first pet, a set of persistent bed bugs who loyally stayed by her side for months.

She received them right upon moving into a brand new place and promptly had to throw away all of her belongings, lose her big old fat broker’s fee, and head to Craigslist to find a new pad.

Luckily, she managed to find a great spot in the hot east village with a walk-in closet. She lived in the walk-in closet, hmm, ha ha, fun.

She did remain unemployed for the better part of the year, but she used her spare time to develop an anxiety-provoked heart murmur, lose a considerable chunk of her hair, and go through a break-up. Linda had an equally busy year.

She spent the majority of it doing everything, everything. I mean everything.

and maintaining a home, and learning more about glioblastoma than our neuro-oncologist’s medical students, and doing daily laundry, and surprising dad with a new porch, and making every holiday special, and barely showering because she truly didn’t

have the time. And all that with a broken shoulder she got when protecting dad from a wave in the ocean. Who says woman can’t have it all? Jingle bells!

Ooh, Mark, Mark, Mark, my older brother Mark. Mark managed to be the sole source of income and stability for our family this year. Mark took two leaves of absences, lived in three apartments, and saw one friend one time.

As the saying goes, money can’t buy happiness, but we have neither. He not only provided us with the green, like red and green, right? Merry Christmas.

But he was able to still maintain a vibrant nightlife. Uh-oh, he spent countless nights up till 5 a.m. talking Alyssa down from panic attacks and existential crises.

He celebrated his 28th birthday with a surprise party. Surprise! Alyssa woke him up in the middle of the night and asked if he could talk through the exact same thing they talked through directly before going to bed.

Fun. We’re all very proud of Mark this year, especially Alyssa’s therapist, for shouldering her load. Lastly, Dad spent this year honorably fighting for his life while continuing to make us laugh every single day.

He was given a terminal cancer diagnosis, and he took it the way he did everything in his life, with courage, resilience, and light. He never asked why, never complained, never gave up hope, and never left our sides.

Instead of spending his last year dying, he spent it teaching us how to live. He died on October 20th, 2015, but he hasn’t left our side since.

We are all in such pain as we approach our first Christmas without him, but we are getting by with his spirit as our guide.

He’s here, harder to see, but he spent 2015 reminding us where he would be and how we could find him when we could no longer see him. He’s here, and he will be here for all the banner years to come.

So we wish you a beautiful holiday with your family, and we thank you for all of your unwavering support this year. We couldn’t have done it without you. In our sadness and emptiness, we continue to find hope in your love.

Be well, go run with bells for Jim, the Limperis clan.

That was Alyssa Limperis, very funny comedian and very funny writer. You can find her at Alyssa Limpe, that’s A-L-Y-S-S-A-L-I-M-P, on Twitter and Instagram, and you really should.

Alyssa’s letter made us wonder how many other people are racking their brains to put a positive spin on a genuinely terrible year. And we have some groundbreaking news for you, so I want you to listen carefully.

Not everything is as good as we make it look online. A lot of us had a really, really hard year. A lot of us have had a lot of really hard years.

In our tireless research, we found out that there are also, unbelievably, dozens of people who have perfectly lovely holidays, like all the time, always have. People who come from very functional, loving households with lots of great memories.

Christmas 1984, so that was the year that my brother and I were responsible for basically initiating my sister into purchasing gifts for the rest of the family.

Welcome to consumerism.

Yeah, exactly. My parents gave her money, and our job was to take her to Maplewood Mall and help her buy Christmas gifts for the rest of the family. So we take her there.

She’s about seven years younger than me. My older brother is a year and a half older, so he was able to drive. And I honestly don’t know what she bought.

What does an eight-year-old buy for their parents?

What they want.

Kids, yeah, whatever, right.

They’re like, I got this doll, dad. I thought you’d love it. Oh, you don’t?

Weird.

In reality, I’m sure it was something way more practical. But when we were shopping, my brother and I saw this red dickie in Sears, a mock turtleneck.

But it’s only like half of it.

Yeah, it just comes down far enough that if you had your top button undone, it would just barely get below that.

But okay, first of all, people love to mock dickies, but I think that we should bring them back because sometimes you want a turtleneck look without wearing a whole another shirt.

What about a scarf? Isn’t that what a scarf is for?

No, that’s it. You want something, you know, tight. You want the appearance of a turtleneck, of a body hugging turtleneck without having your whole body hugged, just your neck hugged.

I’m sure that’s what we were thinking when we purchased this thing.

So our idea was we’re going to buy this red dickie at Sears and we’re going to wrap it up and package it. And on the label, it’s going to say From Carrie to Dad.

And we just thought that is going to be so funny because he’s going to have to open this thing up and like feign, you know, Oh, thank you so much. This is great.

The challenge was that when we were opening gifts was we had to make sure that one got in his hands before her real gift, right? And we get the gift in my dad’s hand and he looks at me and he goes, Oh, okay, from Carrie.

And she kind of looks like, I don’t remember using that wrapping paper. You know, she was kind of right away a little suspicious about what was going on. And he opens it up and pulls out this red Dickie.

And my brother and I, we were laughing so hard. We thought it was the funniest thing.

What is Carrie like? Is she like, why would, what’s half a shirt doing here?

Yeah, she was just right away adamant, like, I did not buy that. And my dad was on to us right away because we were, we were laughing so hard. We’re just rolling around.

The best part is, is that Dickie now has been in the family for 34 years and it just keeps showing up.

And it’ll take like a long break, a little hiatus, because I think what happens is somebody gets it and they move or, you know, it just gets, it’s lost.

And then also they’re enjoying it maybe too much. Okay, they’re getting some use out of it.

Now that I hadn’t thought about, but it’s possible. And then it just comes back like five years later, all of a sudden there’s the red Dickie, shows up at Christmas again.

Do you know where it is right now?

You know, I think I actually might have it. It’s possible that I have the Dickie.

That’s Jay Mathews. Some people are like Jay. They take a joke, although I want to be clear, Dickies are not a joke.

They’re pretty brilliant. And they make it into a tradition that makes their holidays even better. And when their happy, holiday-loving family is hit with something awful, people like Jay and his family still love it.

They still find the tinsel on the burning tree. Not a common phrase, but one that I hope will catch on after this podcast.

So my dad had mesothelioma.

Mesothelioma is a cancer caused by asbestos. It’s not good at all. And it got especially not good for Jay’s dad around Christmas 2009, when he was put into hospice care.

We all got together for Christmas for the last time.

He was, Christmas day, he was actually in the hospital. It took a few days to get him out of the hospital. And then they sent him home on hospice three days after Christmas.

And then we celebrated that evening. And, just the last dinner with the whole family, the last Christmas, we’re all sitting at the table and he just raised a toast and said, well, we all made it. And that was tough, that was pretty tough.

But it really, there was something about it happening around the holidays and all being able to experience the holidays together one last time that made it really special. You have that time to, you know, say those final words and communicate things.

So he said, this is the way to go, I know I am going so very loved. It just, man, it just hit me like a ton of bricks.

And I think, you know, part of what made that whole experience so special and not so heartbreaking, because obviously when your dad dies, that’s pretty heartbreaking, but knowing that that’s how he felt really helped.

Jay’s dad died a few days after Christmas. He died loved, which is the very best way to go.

Part of losing a loved one, especially a loved one we actually loved, not just someone who got the title loved one by default, is that it’s very easy for all events after their death to have a what-if quality to them. What if dad were here?

What would our Christmas letter say? What advice would he impart on me? How much better of a job would I do of just appreciating him while he was right here with me?

We don’t usually get an answer to those what-ifs. But a few years after Jay’s dad died, Christmas past and Christmas present collided in a way that truly only ever happens in movies, or I guess now happens in podcasts too.

So my dad passed away in 2010, and in 2015, there was a gift underneath the tree, and we’re passing out the gifts, and this was from dad to JN. Dilek, that’s my wife.

I thought, well, this must be a mistake because you get three generations of people and there’s all kinds of dads and stuff in the room.

Opened it up and it was his handwritten notes from the speech that he gave at our wedding, which was, Advice for a Successful Marriage.

When your wife says she isn’t hungry, always take twice as much as you can eat, because she will always eat half of what you get.

That’s a fact. That’s a fact. That’s great advice.

Don’t take each other for granted.

Make family a priority. Don’t backwash your pop if you’re both drinking out of the same bottle. Take time to have fun.

Never stop dreaming about what you can do together, even if your folks just shake their heads when you tell them about it. Take vacations. Be able to laugh at yourselves.

Never use the last sheet of toilet paper without replacing the roll. Take time to talk. Never underestimate your ability to make life better for someone else by letting them know you care about them.

Pick your fights and know when to walk away. Build on each other’s strengths and use them in your relationship. Be each other’s best support system.

Always put the toilet seat down when you’re done.

So what was it like opening this in 2015 and seeing your dad’s handwriting?

Yeah, obviously that was pretty emotional. Yeah, because I didn’t know that document existed.

My parents have done that before too, where I did these drawings when I was probably in first grade of Superman, Batman and Robin, and they actually came back, I don’t know, when I was about 44 or something, I got this gift at Christmas and it was

these drawings that I had done that were framed that are now hanging up in my older son’s room. I love that kind of stuff, where things that you didn’t know were still around, like the red dickie, and they just come back at the holidays.

I guess our family had a neck for that kind of thing.

The end of a year is the natural home for those ghosts from our past.

We think of a year as a marker of something, another rotation around the sun, where the conditions, sunrise, sunset, weather, are as close as they ever will be to something we remember.

So it’s a natural place to look back from, to measure against who you thought you would be and what you thought you would do. And often in those reflections, the people we used to know come back to us.

Sometimes they tell us stories, sometimes they make us embarrassed for that time we knocked a kid unconscious during recess in fifth grade. And sometimes they deliver us, once again, advice and instruction on how to love one another.

We are going to take a quick break, and when we return, Jay’s family gets a familiar, recurrent visitor for the holidays. I’ll give you a hint. Ho, ho, ho.

Merry cancer. I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Happyish Holidays from the American public media podcast Terrible. Thanks for asking.

We’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Happyish Holidays from the American public media podcast, Terrible. Thanks for asking. I’m Nora McInerny.

Most therapists I’ve had explain that depression is being past-focused, and anxiety is being future-focused. And the way to stay okayish is to just be in the present, standing on a little footbridge between those two places.

That’s something that Jay Mathews can relate to. Jay has stage 4 metastatic mesothelioma. It’s the same cancer that his father had and died from nine years ago.

Jay is 48 years old, which means Jay has had 48 years of really good holidays. You heard about some of them earlier. His cancer is now in his lungs and his liver.

And stage 4 means that this Christmas might be his last. So, just a few weeks before the holiday season got into full swing, Jay stopped by our studio in St. Paul, Minnesota to hang out on that little footbridge between the past and the future.

To talk about now mostly. For people who are dreading this holiday season, what advice would you impart on how to make it as enjoyable as possible?

You know, I think the key is trying to take that pressure off of all of the gifts and all of that, and trying to make this perfect holiday event. It’s just, I don’t know that that’s realistic.

That’s really good advice.

We could all use that advice as we’re negotiating which family will spend which holiday with this year and which one next year, and when we’re negotiating with extended family over the price limit for gifts, and why we don’t want them giving our kids

piles of plastic stuff that requires batteries and makes noise. While we’re trying to establish our own holiday traditions, we often see our holidays as being a continuum where each year has to be at least as good as the previous one and the next

one. Tradition helps the past blend into the present, but there’s always that year coming up that you dream about, one where everyone actually shows up to dinner on time, one where you aren’t the weird aunt who gave your nephew a gift he couldn’t

even pretend to like, one where everyone is going to do their own thing, and you’re just going to go to Jamaica alone to read quietly. Not like that’s my fantasy or anything. I love my family. I love my family.

I did push Jay a little bit on that advice, like, yes, take the pressure off, but how do you do that?

What I don’t want to say is, hey, you know, could be your last.

But it could be.

Could be worse. Could be your last holiday. Now go have some happy holidays, huh?

But what if Jay’s first piece of advice, take the pressure off, was enough?

What if you did take that at face value?

What if you knew, not just in an, oh, anything could happen kind of way, but knew, statistically speaking, that in all actuality, this Christmas would be your last with your family, at age 48, with two teenage sons?

So our plan is to go to Montana, which my mom and brother both live in Montana. I love going out to Montana. There’s just something, you know, the snow is coming down.

My mom lives in this house that’s a little off the beaten path. And you wake up and literally there will be elk in the front yard and you’re looking at the mountains. And it’s just beautiful.

It is like that is the Christmas scene for me. So being out there with the boys, we get to go sledding unlike hills that are actual mountains. And it just feels like, yeah, this is, this is the way you celebrate Christmas.

It will be, you know, there’s the potential that it’s my last Christmas. That will be on my mind. The, the, I think the challenge for me will be just tucking that far enough back that I’m able to enjoy it for what it is.

It will definitely be different though than any of the past Christmases because there’s a little bit of pressure that should be really special. So this is just, you know, in case my mom is listening, you know I’m looking for some big gifts this year.

Last chance.

Not all of us are going to be able to go to Montana for the holidays and watch the Elk. I know, I checked flights already, we can’t all make it. But it doesn’t really matter where you go or if you go anywhere.

Because when you might be approaching your last holiday season, it also means that you’re approaching a lot of lasts. It means that time itself has a different weight to it, a different sense of meaning.

There has been a shift for me because in the past I would measure good days based on how productive I was. Pre-cancer, going to a record store, finding a record and going home and listening to the record, that would not have been a good day.

I’d be like, what? I didn’t get anything done. And I’m not very productive anymore.

Once I had cancer, you don’t have the energy, you don’t have the stamina, you know, to do a lot of the things that I had been doing, you know, painting or fixing something around the house. And so your concept of a good day shifts.

What I used to call, I used to tell my wife, like, if we don’t get something done, I am going to be mad at the day. Not so much anymore.

I also fall into a trap of like worshipping at the altar of productivity above all else. And that as a measure of my worth?

Yeah, absolutely. My productivity is pretty limited. I mean, there’s still, you know, I will have a plan for today.

I want to, you know, extract myself from my work email, which took way longer than I thought, because I had worked at the same place for 12 plus years, whatever it is. And that was like the only email I had.

And now that I’m not working, like, oh my gosh, I have to set up an email and shift everything over. And little things like that, like, okay, that’s on my list of things that I need to do. And it’s so not about the gifts.

It’s just about getting together. And I don’t know that I feel a lot of pressure in that area. It really is just, let’s get the family together, eat way too much, hang out, tell stories, play some games.

I love that. I think that’s why I actually love Thanksgiving more than Christmas, is because there isn’t that present factor. But it has all the other pieces.

If this were your last Christmas, what would make this a good Christmas?

You know, I think if it was like every other Christmas, if it didn’t feel very different from what we’ve done in the past, that would be a good Christmas.

That is part of the thing with the situation I’m in right now is just, how do you keep things as normal as possible? I just want to live a normal life. And that’s hard with everything that’s going on, but that’s what feels best.

That’s what you know, and it’s comforting.

I think that for me, if I were younger and somebody said, so when you’re 31, your husband’s going to die, I would have imagined that, okay, I’m going to spend that last year with my husband.

I’m going to quit our jobs, and we’re going to go like do all these crazy things. And like we didn’t know. We worked and we stayed in our house, and we went on a honeymoon, and that was what we did.

And that was also, I think, the happiest I’ve ever been, were like those hard days because we just got to like be. And I think that people would be surprised by that. Just the comfort that you find in just your normal life.

Right, yeah.

So I stopped working, I think, a couple weeks ago. Now, my wife works four days a week, so she’s home on Fridays, but now she is working from home on three of those four days. So she’s home, which is great.

And oftentimes, it’s just us sitting next to one another. She’s doing work, and I’m reading or looking at emails or doing something, and just being together and being in the same room is really comforting. It’s wonderful.

It’s great to just have her there. You know, just getting to have time together.

Again, great advice. Advice I know from watching my own husband die slowly of brain cancer that is accurate and important. There’s nothing more important that we have than time.

There’s nothing better to give the people we love, to get from the people we love than actual time together. Time where you’re not trying to squeeze the best from every moment, but time when you realize that the best thing is this moment.

This moment on the couch with each of you quietly tapping at your own laptop. This moment in the morning when your dog does that thing where she kind of snuffles right into your mouth.

It’s kind of gross, but also it’s the only way she knows how to say I love you. This concept of time though is hard to impart on children.

Children who have recently learned about consumerism and have somehow fished from the recycling the many, many gift guides mailed to your home by generous retailers. It’s hard to remember as a grown up when our time has so many demands on it.

When every moment we have can be quantified into billable hours, workable hours. Hours that have a monetary value that we tend to spend mostly at work. Because someone has to be the grown up and pay the mortgage and the kids aren’t grown ups yet.

We are not, as far as I know, all going into our last holiday season. Some of us are, and like Jay, you know it. And some of us are, and we have no idea.

And some of us have many, many more holidays ahead of us. Many more chances to get it right or wrong or just normal. Many more chances to make this season whatever we want it to be.

Yeah, if you find it, who’s getting the dickie this year?

Yeah, who would get the dickie this year? You know, really, this would be the time to pass it along to one of the boys, potentially.

The problem with that is it requires a degree of responsibility to be able to hold on to that and then get it back in rotation later. And 15 and 12.

It’s a little sketchy.

I don’t know. 12-year-old might be able to pull it off. The 15-year-old not yet.

What it would take is, because this is literally how basically everything has to happen now, is Dilek would have to tell them, it is your job to put the dickie in the box and put the… which kind of defeats the purpose.

But yeah, that is one thing that I need to do. I’m going to need to block off some time to find that dickie. That’s going to be really important, because that needs to come out this year.

It’s got…

this is the year…

If there’s one thing this whole show has taught me today is that we got to find that dickie. That’s critical.

It’s critical. It’s critical to the success of not just Christmas 2018, but to Christmas’ future. No pressure.

If there’s no dickie in my final Christmas, I’m going to be mad at Christmas.

That is Jay Mathews.

He is a father, a husband, a brother, and a son with stage four terminal cancer. He is a very good friend, and we wish him and his entire family the most normal holiday season ever. And most importantly, that they find that Dickie.

When we come back, 2018 is old news, and we’ve moved on to a hot new thing, 2019, the future. What will it bring us? Flying cars, cats that stay permanently kitten-sized?

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Happyish Holidays from the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. We’ll be right back.

I’m Nora McInerny and this is Happyish Holidays from the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking. For many of us, the holiday season is a time of reflection and a time of projection.

It’s hard to look ahead to a shiny new year and not be overtaken with all the possibilities within it. Here’s the thing about possibilities. They don’t just exist in a shiny future.

They exist in a shiny future that we can only see through the lens of our present, which is all scuffed up with our past experiences. It’s called perspective, and it means that when we’re looking forward, we’re all looking from our own angles.

I held on for some hope or maybe desperation that I would miraculously get pregnant naturally as March, April, and May rolled by. In May, we had a birthday party for our dog. She turned five.

There is nothing that screams, check out this childless couple like a birthday party for a dog. And weirdly, after three years of trying, we did not get pregnant. I know, shocking.

So June hits and it’s IVF time. I won’t bore you with all the logistics of how this all works, except to tell you it didn’t. $30,000 at least, gone, and nothing to show for it except for a higher credit card balance than we were comfortable with.

One picture of our embryo that wasn’t meant to be, and a body left with bruises and bumps. It wasn’t worth it. I don’t care what anyone says, it didn’t work and it wasn’t worth it.

Maybe one day I will be able to say, oh yeah, it was so worth it. But for now I’m like, nah, this sucks. So Happy Holidays everyone.

I hope they don’t suck.

The end of a year is a time of transition. We’re taking stock and making lists. We’re looking back and looking forward and hopefully we don’t trip and fall and break our phones while we’re doing it.

So we’re here looking towards a new year and hoping for the best. But knowing, looking back at the year we just had, it could for sure be the worst.

Oh, 2018, well, what got us through this year after losing our baby boy at birth last year was hope. Astoundingly, we were able to keep hoping that our future held something beautiful and bright even after such a devastating loss.

We stumbled through the majority of the year, but managed to find some pockets of joy. That was until the end of October came, and we learned I was miscarrying what should have been our rainbow baby.

Hope left my body along with that baby, and I don’t know when it will return or if it will return.

So I guess we’re looking forward to 2019 as much as we can be, and really the only thing I’m capable of hoping for at this point is that 2019 doesn’t suck as much as the last two years.

Nearly all of my Pinterest boards are set to secret, meaning no one can see them but myself. You know why? Because what I hope for myself, the true vision of what I would like my life to look like, is so embarrassing to me.

It’s so embarrassing to just really want something or to even think it’s remotely possible, to have a clear vision for your future that includes crafts you would never do. And that is what Pinterest is for me.

It’s a place for me to build a secret future where you know what? I might learn to tile my own bathroom. A secret future where I might plan and prep meals for my whole family using gluten-free, dairy-free recipes that are nutritious and edible.

I know I am not ever going to tile my own bathroom or meal prep. But what if I did? What if 2019 was the year it all happened for me?

The year I became my secret Pinterest boards?

So what I’m looking to do in 2019 is to change my behavior. Because a lot of times, I’ll think of things I want to do with my life, or just something different I want to try.

And then I come up with this mental pro-con list, where I put one thing in the pro side and a ton of things in the negative side. And then I don’t follow through on it.

And often I dictate that con list based on what’s the appropriate adult thing to do. Because I don’t know, I have this weird idea that we all have to be adults and it’s very structured and I don’t want to disappoint myself.

So I put a lot of pressure on myself, which is stupid. Because I’m 29, I’m allowed to make mistakes. And I’d rather go out there and live big and do crazy things and not live by this code because the inaction I have been taking sucks.

So goals for 2019, deciding to do things and then actually following through.

See? That’s why my Pinterest boards are secret. All that pressure to live by the code and not make mistakes.

That peppermint candy wreath I pinned in a moment of inspiration had better come out perfectly.

If I ever let that secret me make an actual thing that I would put on our door, sidenote, I showed my producer Hans Butoh, my ideal holiday secret Pinterest boards as a secret for research for this episode, and then he betrayed me by writing my

secret about that peppermint candy wreath into this script and now I have to make this peppermint candy wreath and it better be good because you’re all watching me. So we asked our listeners to do the radio equivalent of showing us their secret

Pinterest. We asked them to tell us their most top secret hopes and dreams for the coming year. We asked them to tell us, what do you want?

That is an interesting question. What do I want in 2019? I don’t think I’ve been asked what do I want.

God, in years, I want a healthy, happy family. And it has been a really rough couple of years with my health and having a miracle baby, my husband unfortunately relapsing.

So I’m just hoping that somehow in 2019, we can all heal emotionally and keep our family together.

And nothing is stopping me from taking that risk because I am already doing all the hard and scary cancer treatment stuff that I need to do and my husband is in intensive outpatient therapy and just completed rehab.

So this year I’m going to be hopeful and optimistic and I want my family together as I’m sure you can hear my little one in the background fighting his nap. Hopefully he sleeps more too.

What do I want from 2019? My two biggest goals for next year are to have cleared the majority of the debt that I’ve accrued in, you know, my 10 years of adulthood, and to purchase a house for my family.

The thing standing in my way, obviously, to get the house would be my debt, is standing in my way. It’s a pretty big burden that I carry with me to try and pay this off as quickly as humanly possible.

And I’ve had to make a ton of sacrifices to do this. But probably one of the biggest things is my fear gets in the way, the fear of that I’m not going to be able to do it, or that I’m never going to get there.

And I have to constantly rely on my patience to get me through this time, to know that there is a larger goal in sight, and that I’m slowly chipping away at it.

What do I want for the year? I mean, apart from living through the year, and what’s stopping me? Hopefully not my health, but that’s a big question.

I was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer in November of 2017. I was 32 years old. My little boy had just turned two.

I had just celebrated my fifth wedding anniversary. My husband and I had just bought our first house and moved out of our minuscule Manhattan apartment.

I’m now 33 years old, so all of my friends and a lot of family members are having second and third and some even fourth babies. We have one child, we’re very lucky, but we’re never going to have another.

I have essentially lived one third of my expected life already. What I want for 2019 is to continue to do the things that scare me, to continue to do the things that I can no longer put off until I have the time someday.

And try to balance my desire to leave something in the world, leave something behind, leave my legacy.

What do I want out of 2019? What a great question. I want to become more self-accepting of myself and show myself the love that I didn’t feel as a child.

I want to feel that as an adult and be happy with who I am because I have achieved a lot and overcome a lot, and I need to accept myself. And the risk is that I won’t be able to do it because I’ll find some excuse why I don’t deserve it.

But I’m also going to try to find a great support system to help me achieve these goals. And I know it won’t just be 2019. It’ll be the rest of my life.

But 2019 is a great place to start.

I’ve worked hard on knowing what to do when my depression kind of comes rising back up and I can feel it kind of coming on. And I think in 2019, I think I’m ready for a baby. I’m kind of ready for the next chapter in my life.

And I’m really longing to be a mother. And I’m ready to embrace those challenges. And, you know, also I’m mentally prepared to handle the possibility of another miscarriage.

I feel confident that I have the tools now to get through something like that. So I think starting here in January 2019, I think my husband and I are going to start trying for a baby. Oh my God, that’s so exciting.

I want to be honest and I want to take care of myself.

But I also want to continue taking the risks that I do on a daily basis. I want to say, hey, I’m in love with you when I feel it. I want to say no when I think it.

Or I want to say I’m scared. I also want to be able to trust myself. And I really want to help my family.

And I really want to start doing what I know that I can do. I think I’m always waiting for the right time. All the social media voices tell you that there’s no such thing as the perfect timing.

But I feel that I’m not ready. I feel that I’m constantly not ready. And I feel that I have so much to go to reach to the point where I gain the tools to start working that why should I even bother?

Sometimes I tell myself that maybe I could be happier with less, which in a way feels okay, but not. It’s clear that I’m stopping myself.

If you can’t tell, I am clearly a big fan of therapy, and I’m clearly a person who likes to spend time on the past and on the future, a person who is desperate to spend more time on that little footbridge of the present.

That’s where you’ll find me this holiday season. Desperately searching for a footbridge?

Yeah.

So, Happyish Holidays to you. We hope that your past has been manageable, your present isn’t so bad, and your future looks moderately reasonable.

2019.

Promise me you’ll be better, because I don’t think my heart can handle much worse.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this has been Happyish Holidays from the American public media podcast, Terrible, Thanks for Asking. You can subscribe to our show, Terrible, Thanks for Asking, on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher or any podcast app.

It’s probably actually built into your phone just waiting for you. You can also listen to our show and learn more about what we do online at ttfa.org. Thank you to Alyssa Limperis and Jay Mathews.

Another thanks to Emily, Michael, Shelley, Jennifer, Janelle, Mackenzie and everyone else who submitted their holiday hopes and dreams and reflections to us. Our senior producer is Hans Butow. Marcel Malekebu is our assistant producer.

Hannah Meacock-Ross is our project manager. Emma Martins is our intern. Our theme music is by Joffrey Wilson.

Terrible Thanks for Asking is a production of APM, American Public Media.