Spiritual Misfits Podcast · Meeting Ground

O Come All Ye Misfits (with Carolyn Meers and Linda Pesavento)

·1 hr 12 min·5 clips

Carolyn Mears says six months off work has brought “growing anxiety” ahead of Christmas.

Will Small frames the episode as a Christmas conversation for people who live on the fringes of faith. Carolyn Mears returns with Linda Pesavento for an honest look at how the season lands when family, memory, and religion all press in at once. The conversation begins with the lead-up to Christmas and quickly settles into the difference between showing up out of obligation and showing up because you actually choose to be there. Carolyn points out that many people reach the holidays already tired, and that exhaustion matters because it makes pressure harder to carry. Her answer is not to pretend Christmas should be simpler in some abstract way. It is to notice what is ahead and make a personal inventory: which events are worth the energy, what can be skipped, and what needs to be named before the calendar fills up. She keeps coming back to authenticity as a practical discipline rather than a slogan. If you are going, the question becomes how to be there as yourself. Linda then shifts the conversation toward family dynamics. She describes a larger Christmas gathering where her husband will be working and she will attend with her two adult children. Before they go, they talk through when to arrive, how long to stay, and how to avoid leaving one another exposed to certain family members. The point is not drama. It is simply what keeps the day from tipping from manageable into a mess. Linda also names the older ache underneath those choices. Even now, almost 57, she is still carrying unresolved expectations around the validation that she is still looking for from her parents. That honesty gives the conversation its weight, because the episode does not rush past old wounds in order to get to holiday cheer. Instead it keeps asking what kindness, honesty, and a workable path forward look like when faith and family history are both in the room.

As heard by us

A Christmas conversation about family pressure, honesty, and the work of setting limits.

O Come All Ye Misfits follows Will Small, Carolyn Mears, and Linda Pesavento as they weigh Christmas pressure, family history, and how long to stay when a gathering starts asking more than it gives.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Christmas listen that helps you take an honest inventory.

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