{"id":136990,"date":"2020-12-19T01:14:06","date_gmt":"2020-12-18T22:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/why-im-spending-the-holidays-alone\/"},"modified":"2020-12-19T01:14:06","modified_gmt":"2020-12-18T22:14:06","slug":"why-im-spending-the-holidays-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/why-im-spending-the-holidays-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"#Why I&#8217;m spending the holidays alone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<strong>#Why I&#8217;m spending the holidays alone<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n                            Five Canadians on the decision to self-isolate over the holidays\u2014and what they&#8217;re doing to cope\n                        <\/div>\n<div>\n<p class=\"p1\">Against the backdrop of a spike in COVID-19 cases, many Canadians are spending the holidays alone to protect their families and communities. <em>Maclean\u2019s<\/em> asked five of them how they plan to keep their spirits up.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photographs by Lucy Lu<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"rdm-gallery\" data-gallerytitle=\"alone-for-the-holidays\" data-gallery-id=\"1597\" data-gallery-loaded=\"false\" data-gallery-total-slides=\"5\">\n<p>    Alone for the holidays<\/p>\n<div class=\"rdm-gallery-container gallery-slide-container\" data-mobile-ad-frequency=\"3\">\n<div class=\"gallery-slide-content-container\" data-currentslide=\"1\">\n<div class=\"gallery-slide-content alignment-left\">\n                <img decoding=\"async\" data-sizes=\"auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/ALONE-FOR-HOLIDAYS-JUANITA-LUCY-LU-DEC18-1000x714.jpg\"\/><\/div>\n<p>                                <span class=\"current-slide\">1<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"gallery-slide-seperator\"> \/ <\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"no-of-slides\">5<\/span><\/p>\n<p>                                <span class=\"gallery-slide-information-slide-caption\">Photograph by Lucy Lu<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"gallery-slide-information-container\">\n<div class=\"gallery-slide-information-slide-description\">\n<p class=\"p1\"><strong>Juanita Kwarting, 37<\/strong> <em>Toronto<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Usually, my holiday plans are in two scenarios. If I&#8217;m here, I&#8217;m usually at a friend&#8217;s house, and we&#8217;re having a fairly large gathering. Or I&#8217;m with my family. Usually we&#8217;re meeting up somewhere in the world, in the U.S. or Ghana, as a family. This year, I am choosing to spend Christmas alone.<\/p>\n<p>I started this whole process of choosing to be alone in mid-November. I live with depression, and two years ago, I had a really bad episode of my depression. So the idea of being alone really triggered the situation and brought back all of those dark thoughts. I was talking to my therapist, and I just got the idea of what if I just decided to choose this? Thinking of it from a choice perspective allows me to find peace in the situation because I don&#8217;t feel like I&#8217;m a victim of the situation.<\/p>\n<p>So what I\u2019m doing this year is focusing on creating a mental health plan. But it basically is in five steps. The first step is to identify your concern. The second one is to be kind to yourself. The third one is identifying skills that can help you reduce the intensity [of your emotions]. And then the fourth one is to have fun things to do! The fifth thing is to write it all down, or share it with somebody.\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><span class=\"ctx-article-root\"><!-- --><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p><strong><span style=\"color: #ff6600;\">If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqBwgKMLG0nwswvr63Aw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\">Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">For forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/society\/why-im-spending-the-holidays-alone\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#Why I&#8217;m spending the holidays alone&#8221; Five Canadians on the decision to self-isolate over the holidays\u2014and what they&#8217;re doing to cope Against the backdrop of a spike in COVID-19 cases, many Canadians are spending the holidays alone to protect their families and communities. Maclean\u2019s asked five of them how they plan to keep their spirits&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/ALONE-FOR-HOLIDAYS-JUANITA-LUCY-LU-DEC18-750x422.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1545,1356,67806,68],"class_list":["post-136990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-editors-picks","tag-holidays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}