You Don’t Have to Go: Rewriting Your Holiday Boundaries with Liz Svatek
Why rewriting holiday expectations may be the most powerful boundary you set this season.
There’s a moment every year—usually long before we’re ready—when the holidays begin creeping in. The decorations go up, the peppermint-flavored everything arrives, and suddenly we’re thrust back into a script we didn’t write but somehow memorized.
For many women, the holidays aren’t just about celebration. They’re about performance.
We cook, we host, we patch together tense family dynamics, we manage the emotions in the room, we smooth the edges no one else sees. We walk into December already bracing ourselves—not for joy, but for impact.
It’s a truth that rarely gets spoken out loud.
Which is why my recent Carrie On! conversation with Liz Svatek hit me in a place I didn’t even know needed hitting.
You Don’t Have To Go
Liz—Rapid Transformational Therapist, bestselling author of Finding Your Diamonds, and CEO of Warrior Women Inc.—walked onto my show and said the sentence so many of us needed years ago: “You don’t have to go.”
Not to the gathering that makes your body tighten.
Not to the home that feels more like emotional quicksand than comfort.
Not to the table where you’ve spent your entire life managing other people’s dysfunction.
Liz knows this intimately.
She grew up in a house where love and fear lived side by side, where the ground shifted daily, where she became what she calls “the queen of eggshells”—a role so many daughters know too well. And for years, even into adulthood, she kept trying to perform her way into a family system that could never give her safety.
It wasn’t until her 49th year—when she put everything on the table—that she gave herself permission to walk away from the people who had shaped her but could no longer hold her.
Listening to Liz talk about the moment she finally set a boundary with her sister—the years of stomach aches, the shower incident, the guilt, the grief, the freedom—made me realize how deeply the holidays carry our old wounds. These aren’t neutral gatherings. They’re emotional mirrors.
The holidays have a way of placing us back into childhood roles we’ve outgrown…
The peacemaker.
The fixer.
The comedian.
The good girl.
The one who doesn’t rock the boat.
And when Liz looked straight into the camera and said, again:
“You don’t have to go,”
I felt it in my chest. Not as permission to be defiant—but as a quiet reclaiming of the self.
Choose Comfort Over Chaos
Because here’s the part most of us overlook:
You’re allowed to decide how you want to feel during the holidays.
Not how you’ve always felt.
Not how your family expects you to feel.
Not how tradition demands you feel.
You get to choose peace.
You get to choose calm.
You get to choose joy—real joy, not the kind wrapped in perfectionism or survival.
Liz and I talked about what it means to redesign a season you once endured. To choose comfort over chaos. To create new rituals that honor the woman you are now. To stop performing and start living.
She reminded me—and all of us—that the holidays don’t have to be inherited.
They can be created.
They can be quieter.
They can be softer.
They can be silly.
They can be spacious.
They can be different.
And different doesn’t mean broken.
Different often means finally aligned.
Choosing Yourself is not Selfish
So before December sweeps you into old patterns, I want to offer you the same question I asked Liz—the same question she answered with her entire life:
“How do you want to feel this holiday season?”
Let that be the compass.
Let that guide your decisions.
Let that shape your rituals.
You deserve a season that feels like home. Not a home you survived—but a home you’ve consciously built.
And if you need a little courage, a little perspective, or a little permission slip to choose yourself…
✨ Tune into my conversation with Liz Svatek on the latest episode of Carrie On!
It’s raw, it’s healing, and it just might change how you walk into the holidays this year.
Because choosing yourself is not selfish.
It’s how you Carrie On!
xo,
Carrie
Watch our full conversation on YouTube.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Connect with Liz on Instagram and LinkedIn.
📖 Buy her book, Finding Your Diamonds
🩷 Visit her website at www.lizsvatek.com
