Listen, the turns this episode takes...I could barely keep up. Two of my very favorite people, twin sisters Brooke and Brittany, unpack past and current Christmas traditions, and well, just a whole lot more. Skincare, shutting down unsolicited advice, navigating Santa + Jesus with your kids and how in the world do you combine and eliminate traditions once you get married. Grab your cocoa and Rudolph sweater - we have a lot to cover.

I get it, that word - grief - is like a red flag to keep scrolling. Why would you voluntarily push play on an emotion we spend much of our time trying to avoid? But that's the exact reason why you should push play. Grief is the greatest emotion no one tells us about...because no one wants to talk about it. Makes sense. Until you find yourself trying to navigate the loss of a person, relationship, expectation, dream. Then what? That overwhelming feeling we spend so much time trying to shove away into the back corners of our minds only begins to show up in new ways we never saw…

A few episodes ago, in For When You Feel Buried, we talked about how to keep doing what you know to do when you don't really feel like doing anything at all. Consider this a follow-up of sorts. These are lessons gleaned from a year I didn't really want to walk through. A year I wanted an escape route out of. These are lessons from letting go.

If you're new to No One Told Me, let me explain. Our Did Anyone Tell You episodes are a break from the norm, meant to give you all you need in any small-talk-required situation. NOTM friends, Kaley and Khari, jump in this time around to share their personal Halloween experiences...that will most likely surprise you. Take a breath, laugh a little and have the happiest of Halloweens.

You know what I'm ready for? What I'm doing my very best to build? A soft life. I'm tired of this life lived trying to prove something, you know? Because it never ends. There's always some new finish line to get to, and as I get older - I want less focus on where I'm finishing in the race and more focus on how I'm running it. The soft life is in not trying to live a life being who anyone else wants you to be, but paying attention to who you are and who Jesus is calling you to be in spite of expectations and circumstances. It's not easy.…

Today we're rolling with my new friend, Stephanie May Wilson. She's an author, podcast host, coach and all around encourager - that's my kind of people. So, I think she's your kind of people too. We spend the next half hour talking about how much we want to back out of commitment when the time comes to execute on the commitment, how we hype ourselves up in really hard seasons, how to walk with other people who aren't going through anything we've ever been through...really it's just about how to stay right where you are even though you kind of wish you were anywhere else. There's lots that can keep…

Community is just...hard. Whether you’re rolling into a new chapter in life with a new job or a new city, new husband, new baby - these big life shifts create big emotional and mental shifts and really all you want is for someone to be like, “Yeah, I get it. Let’s walk through it together." We want to show up exactly how we are without having to perform or cover anything up. That’s the gold standard of friendship, right? You can be exactly who you are without any fear of changing the relationship. While I don’t have a magic community forming formula for you, we do maybe have ways to…

If you've ever found yourself shape shifting, becoming who someone else needs you to be, saying yes when you really want to say no... If you find yourself completely at a loss when someone asks, "What do you really want?" - you're in the best place to discover the best of you with our friend Dr Alison Cook.

If you, like me, feel a little buried in your season...by disappointment, expectations, uncertainty - push play. Let's be honest, push play even if you don't, because this is just one of those things that happens. And you'll be happy to know what to do when it does.