An Ode to Rage Cleaning: True holiday magic comes from embracing imperfection and showing up as yourself

It seems that every time I’ve been completing a chapter on learning a new life skill, I’m sent a rash of patients for me to teach what I’ve learned. The holidays at a mental health practice are predictably challenging for everyone, but this year the themes so closely matched my own path that I felt the need to write these thoughts for you. Because after the past two weeks I’m not only certain that this is not a unique experience but certain that it’s a societal pattern that needs to change. 

As a woman, this path for me began almost with birth. Women are the keepers of the magic in the family. We press napkins, get up early to bake turkeys, plan ahead to fill stockings, and ensure that everyone in our lives experiences holidays as something cherished, loving, and whole. To wake up on Christmas morning to the smell of sticky buns and an egg casserole, with a clean house and a tree full of presents is to be wrapped in the love of your mother. My mother was an expert at this. Not only was every gift hand chosen for every member of the family, stray people without a family to go to were brought home and cared for. A perfectly timed and decorated five course meal was executed with precision and perfection in every sense of the word. The house twinkled with love, life, and laughter. 

My mother died when I was only 28, but before she died she wanted to make sure that I knew how to host. I would be anointed as the woman to take on the mantle of the holidays. I would carry forward for my family the traditions and be the holder of the magic. I inherited timed spreadsheets, linens, China, the family dining table, and generations of expectation. I hosted my first holiday at just 27 when I had 3 young children at home complete with 25 family members and 5 course made-from-scratch meal. I took over a task much before many of my peers and executed it perfectly for many years. Now at almost 40, I can pull off a 30 person event without even blinking or thinking very hard. I have many successful meal plans and table settings I can pull from and execute with ease. 

But this came with a dark side that so many of us know. In order to execute an experience like this, pressure is high and timing is paramount. It is performative in the worst sense of the word, and because the outcome is so cherished by all, the ends justify the means. 

These past weeks, I heard this repeated by woman after woman as I sat down across from them in my office. One woman said, “I sat down some plates a little too hard accidentally and my daughter who never complains tensed and said ‘I have trauma from you slamming cabinets.’” Another said, “we were driving from one event to the next and I could hear myself digging into my partner in the exact same way my mother did because I was so stressed and never took any time for myself this season.” 

I have a feeling that I don’t need to explain the experience to you, because you each know this viscerally. This is the ugly side of the magic. My family used to call it “the crazy eyes.” The worst part about the crazy eyes is that it feels so righteous. Of course you have crazy eyes, you have to execute an impossible task and no one will help you. I would slide so easily into the role of martyr that I wore it as a suit of armor as I stormed through the house armed with righteous indignation. And of course, the end result was so amazing that I always felt completely justified by the means. Everyone who attended thanked me and told me how incredible it was, the best holiday they’d ever been to and the best food they’d ever had. As a good friend once said about me, after she heard my father talking about me at a holiday event, I was six times perfect. I had done so well that he said six different times that I was perfect. 

When my fourth son was born, and it became clear that I would be the mother to only sons, grief around my mother’s death became particularly poignant. There would be no one to share my crazy eyes with, no one to pass the mantle to. At first, I thought I might overcome gender inequality by teaching my boys to have crazy eyes with me. But this felt terrible too, because I was consumed by loneliness and fatigue each holiday. By the time dinner was served, I would be so exhausted that I could barely enjoy it. My whole system was vibrating so strongly with the need to perform that I missed the joy of the season. 

I have been on a journey to find a new way. Every year, I completed a different incarnation. Some years, I just worked on the holiday to avoid the grief and distress around it, some years performing, some years, showing up to someone else’s holiday. The first year that I had the possibility of true joy on a holiday was during Covid, interestingly. Because of social distancing, I wasn’t able to perform. Our group consisted of only my immediate family and our au pair, Nathalia, who was here from Brazil. Because it was Thanksgiving, a traditionally American holiday, I wanted to do all the traditional foods, and because it was only us I was protected from the need to perform. She and I turned the music up and we cooked all day. It was filled with joy, food, laughter, and dancing. We laughed as the pie fell through the grate onto the bottom of the oven and we made the turkey with more seasonings than usual because “we aren’t doing that white person sh*t” as she said. It was delicious, warm, and full of love. 

Since then, I’ve tried to recreate that experience without success until an odd turn of events caused each of my family members to be busy again this year on Thanksgiving and we would have a holiday with just Nathalia and now her husband and baby. This fall was particularly busy for me, and I found by November 25th that I had planned absolutely nothing for the holiday and thought, well, what will be will be. 

So the night before, I told her, just come when you’re ready and everything will work out the way it is meant to. I didn’t shop ahead, I didn’t clean, and I didn’t have a modicum of a plan before she arrived. I slept until 1pm. Let me say that again. On the day that I was hosting Thanksgiving, I slept until 1pm. When they arrived, I gathered everyone around. I said, I’m here for knowledge but I’m not doing anything. If it’s important to you, make it, otherwise we aren’t having it. 

Nathalia had gotten a free turkey and her husband cooked it. We had apples we picked and cut from our tree last summer that my oldest son made into a pie. My third son wanted mashed potatoes so he made those. I made some green beans that I had. My husband made cranberry sauce. I stuck some bread in the bread maker. We ate at 8pm. We played games, we laughed, we stayed up late. We made a fire in the backyard and sat out and watched the stars. My feet didn’t hurt, I was full of joy, and it was the happiest I’ve seen my family on a holiday, and I had done… nothing. I had done nothing and this holiday actually was six times perfect. 

Now I recognize that I am riding on a wave of traditions that I had already built coming to this holiday. I had already taught my, now 18 year old, son to bake pies. I had already picked the apples the summer before and saved them so that work was already done. I had planted herbs in my garden years before that we used for the turkey. But this holiday was like the story of the loaves in the fishes in the purest sense. There was enough because I believed there would be. It never mattered what the end result was, because the importance was on getting there together. Whatever we brought to fruition would have been perfect, even if it was peanut butter and jelly. Because the joy was in doing it together, being together, and laughing together; not in the perfection of it. In fact, the perfection was in the imperfection. 

As many of my patients know, when I will often spend time in meditation and come to the week with a mantra. I believed that this mantra was for me when I first started, but God often guides my spirit to a mantra that’s actually for myself and all the people who will step into my office that week. I would like to share the evolution of mantras that lead to this experience because I believe that journey is usually more important than the destination. 

So in order that I received, learned, and distributed them:

1. The more you rest the more you receive. 

2. Perfection is an illusion. 

3. Do it messy. 

Today is Christmas Eve and I’m doing it messy. This might give a few of you hives, but I only bought one present for each of my children and no one else. I started buying them two days ago. I invited no one to Christmas, but had 4 families ask to come so we distributed the parts of the meal and we will make it together when they arrive. I set no timelines and everyone will show up when it makes sense for them. Everything will happen in the time and way it’s meant to. And I’ve proven to myself at Thanksgiving that perfection is an illusion and I can show up messy and it will be incredible. 

This morning I was given a gift. My oldest son told me that he’s so relaxed in a way that he’s not experienced in years. He’s home from college and so living in the home where I’m not rage cleaning for the first time these weeks. I don’t know that he knows that’s why it’s relaxing here, but without my energy pushing intensity into the environment, he is relaxing into it for the first time in years. The thing that I expected the least and am cherishing the most is that everyone in my orbit is happier, more relaxed, and thriving because I’m doing it messy. I am still the magic holder because a mother’s emotions flood her home and when the emotions are balanced and flow of energy is appropriate everyone feels it. 

I share this story of growth for myself in hopes that all mothers who are stuck in the cycle of the crazy eyes will hear and feel deeply and viscerally that the more you rest the more you receive. Because perfection is an illusion and when you show up as your most authentic messy self everyone around you prospers because you are the magic without doing anything other than being yourself.

Rachel Ward, PMHNP-BC is the founder of Something Human Mental Health. She believes strongly in removing barriers to access to mental health and creating a holistic person centered and welcoming place for people to receive care.