Blog

#ChronicChristmas Gift Guide Day 1: How to Reduce Stress During the Holidays

Description: Lene sitting in front of a Christmas tree, holding her book Chronic Christmas. Image has the number 1 in a heart and the hashtag #ChronicChristmas

This is my daily Advent calendar of gift ideas for people with chronic illness, running from December 1-25. Some entries will contain affiliate links.

This is obvious. Perhaps too obvious?

I had to start my 2018 #ChronicChristmas Guide with my book Chronic Christmas: Surviving the Holidays with a Chronic Illness. After all, it is what inspired so much of what I do around the holidays, both here on the blog and in the other parts of my life.

When I was a child growing up in Denmark, advent candles and advent calendars were big part of building anticipation to the big day, as well, I suppose, a way to keep little ones entertained along the way so they didn’t explode prior to the actual holiday. I remember eating breakfast in the dark to the light of an Advent candle slowly burning down the date. I had lit it myself, first with adult supervision, then eventually on my own.

It was really important to blow it out as soon as you reached the magical dividing line between this day and the next.

#ChronicChristmas is an Advent calendar of tips on how to make the holidays less stressful for people with chronic illness and the people who love them.

(An Advent calendar within an Advent calendar — is that too meta?)

Each chapter is about a particular theme, divided into a tip for the person with chronic illness and a suggestion for someone who can support them. It can be really difficult to ask for help and equally hard to know how to help — this book solves both problems.

In the process, it also provides some gentle education for your healthy family and friends on what it’s actually like to live with chronic illness.

The book also contains a few surprises. Because it’s the holidays, so you should have something nice as a surprise.

You can buy Chronic Christmas: Surviving the Holidays with a Chronic Illness on all the Amazons, in both paperback and Kindle versions.

1 Comment

  1. Rick Phillips on December 1, 2018 at 9:06 pm

    I treasure my often loaned copy !!!