The Feral Housewife's Guide to

Living Authentically, Creatively, & Intentionally

Issue #100 || December 26th, 2025 || Previous issues

Hey Reader,

Maybe you didn't expect to see me in your inbox this week. Maybe you've come to expect nothing normal from me. Haha. I wouldn't blame you.

Whether you celebrate holidays or not, who doesn't love days off? Preferably many days off 😊 or even better, as many days off in a row as you'd like.

Believe it or not, as hard as writing can be, writing for me is time off. That's because I love writing and journaling. It keeps me sane and it makes me feel authentically me. It's my life purpose. And so I write even on days when I don't have to.

100 Newsletters

This is the hundredth time I’ve sat down to write to you.

Isn't that crazy (and kind of cool)?

I'm usually pretty good at giving up, but I've committed to writing this weekly newsletter and I'm grateful to you for being here with me.

I wanted to do something special for my 100th newsletter, but perhaps 'special' is overrated. The world is in chaos. People are doing their best to survive. Most everyone is burnt out, exhausted, emotionally spent, and wishing to DO LESS.

What would be fitting for this last issue of 2025 is to validate what you and I (and possibly billions) are experiencing. Life is short, hard, and sometimes downright painful and confusing.

There are many good ways of coping, but I'd like to talk today about the simplicity of rest and letting go.

As I write this, my husband came asking me to give someone a call to cheer her up. And my response? We are the blind leading the blind, the drowning saving the drowning.

Who doesn't need a call to cheer them up?

But first, let's talk about one not so small thing we can do to help ourselves.

Letting go

If you're like me, sometimes we have expectations in life that we'd do better to let go.

Things like:

certainty
tidy endings
closure
things being picture-perfect
success
productivity

We often measure ourselves to impossible standards that then leave us wallowing in guilt and shame.

Getting enough rest sometimes feels that way. It can induce guilt and shame especially when rest requires more time than we expected.

So here's my invitation to you: endings often invite us to pause and reflect. To notice what we’ve been carrying, and more importantly, notice what we might be ready to set down.

There’s a lot of pressure around new years to add things—habits, goals, better versions of ourselves.

But subtraction is often better than addition. Addition feels easier, safer. The concept of adding more to our dinner plate, to our bank accounts, to our already cramped schedule, feels appealing IN THE MOMENT.

But where truth, wisdom, and healing come in is when we learn to subtract what doesn't matter to us.

When I enter a room, I ask: what can I get rid of to create space, to make it easier to clean and manage? Or what am I not using that is cluttering my environment and thus my mind?

I am the FIRST to tell you that subtracting is way more difficult than adding, and to think— I'm a minimalist at heart.

Can we learn any lessons from nature about resting?

Often, the natural world around us teaches us some of the greatest lessons in life.

A lesson from nature

Seeds do their most important work underground.

Their work is slow and invisible, and demands time and patience. It requires soil conditions to be good enough (not perfect).

It requires little effort from the outside world. The gardener simply plants the seed and waters it. The gardener DOES NOT stand over the seed, try to hurry it along, or beg it to be or do something it cannot.

The seed, when ready, miraculously does what it needs to, drawing nutrients from the soil, water, and sun to sprout. When it's ready, it comes out of its shell, and months (or years) later, it produces something.

You and I are like those seeds that get planted, sprout, and eventually produce something (hopefully sweet & beneficial).

The reality though, is that our lives are incredibly short and so we're in an anxious hurry to grow, produce, and be perfect.

I wonder what lessons God put in seeds for us to learn?

A few come to mind.

We need rest.
We need to take in nutrients.
Our growth is invisible to others until we're strong enough to break through the "soil".
You must honor who you are. A pumpkin seed can never grow a cucumber. There's no comparing them either. I love both!
We can't always control our growing conditions, but we can extract what we need from it.
Fruitage and output vary greatly from plant to plant and season to season.

Maybe you can come up with even more things we can learn.

I invite you to think about it while you rest.

Another note on rest

I have a dog and a cat. BOTH spend most of the day lying around, resting, sleeping. Why? Is it a waste of their time?

My take?

Rest is necessary for action. They're building up strength and stamina for when action is needed, and they never know when that might be.

Rest IS productive.

And not just for animals, or seeds.

It can be that way for you and me if we see the benefits, and give ourselves permission to.

Now, for you anxious overachievers, like myself (but worse), those who NEVER sit still because they just can't. Rest doesn't always have to look like sleeping, sitting, or lounging around.

There are several types of rest and all of them are beneficial.

They are:

Mental: not managing, solving, or controlling anything. Just letting things be.
Emotional: being honest and authentic about who you are, don't say you're fine when you're not.
Physical: sleep, R&R, light, restorative activities like stretching or walking in nature.
Sensory: taking a break from social media, television, your phone, etc. You get the idea.
Social: spending time alone is needed for processing, for deeply listening to yourself and your needs.
Spiritual: making time to connect to something bigger than ourselves. This is about INPUT not output or performance visible to others.
Creative: taking time out of our own creative works to be inspired by others. Or create for play not pressure.

Next year: 2026

As this year comes to an end, I’m sitting with a different kind of list: the things I don’t want to carry forward.

Not because they were mistakes. But because they were heavy.

Things like:

the belief that rest must be earned
the quiet guilt that shows up when I say no
the roles I slip into automatically, without asking if they still fit or if I'm hurting more than helping
the pressure to be palatable, productive, or pleasing

I don’t have a neat bow for this.

Just an awareness that survival mode teaches us how to endure—but not always how to listen.

And listening feels like the work now.

A gentle invitation

When it feels right, take a few minutes this week and open a notebook.

No timers. No outcome. No fixing.

Write at the top of the page: What am I no longer willing to carry?

Let yourself answer slowly and be surprised. You don’t need to finish. You don’t need to keep it. You don’t need to do anything with it at all.

Sometimes naming is enough.

One last permission slip

You're allowed to:

rest without explaining it
grow quietly
take your time
not perform healing
not rush outcomes
let contentment be enough for now

You don’t owe anyone proof of productivity.

And you most certainly don’t owe guilt your attention.

I'm learning to let myself rest more than I think is "appropriate" and even better when I tell guilt to take a long nap.

Thank you for being on this journey with me.

For reading, thinking, feeling, and being vulnerable with me—whether this was your first issue or your hundredth issue.

I’ll see you in the new year.

With Love, Creativity, & Intention,

Anna

P.S. If you're enjoying this newsletter, please forward it to a friend.

www.aferalhousewife.com

https://linktr.ee/aferalhousewife

I'm Anna—a recovering perfectionist, feral housewife, and writer.

I help overwhelmed women wake up from autopilot, ditch the guilt, and question the narratives they've been handed—so they can figure out who they are underneath all the roles.

What you think, believe, and feel influences everything—and most of us were never given permission to listen, let alone heal.

Think. Feel. Write. Heal.

Anna Celotto

Writer & Integrative Mind-Body Coach

The Feral Housewife's Guide to Living Authentically, Creatively, & Intentionally

Seeds do their most important work underground (so do you)