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Home for the Holidays
Traveling this season? Don't skimp on self-care.
By Erin Moore

Going home for the holidays can be stressful—not just because you're removing yourself from your everyday routines but because you're inserting yourself somewhere ... different.

If you're traveling this holiday, one thing to bring alongside the gifts you're packing for others is the means to care for yourself. Drawing from my own experience visiting a boring, small town for the holidays, I've got some tips on how to cope by taking the comforts of home along for the ride.

Bring Your Personal Flavor
Relying on food prepared by others for several days at a time can be a challenge. Maybe your grandma is trying to feed you dubious leftovers, or your mom keeps forgetting that vegetarians don't do chicken broth. Whatever it is, being your own person means you have your own habits and preferences, your own ways of doing things.

So bring your favorite snacks to give your stomach a sense of something familiar or volunteer to bring ingredients for a dish you know you'll at least love at the holiday dinner, and make enough so you have some leftovers to sneak from the fridge later. When yours truly goes home, I bring the kitchen sink of ingredients—nice bread for snacking and breakfast toast, a reliable case of craft beers to keep me out of my parents' stash, even my own garlic and my own knife. It just feels good to have your stuff, your flavors.

Find Your People
We're all guilty of typecasting one another—it's human nature to reduce each other to stereotypes. It's especially easy to do with far-flung family members, such as your redneck uncle, your fitness freak SOL, your climber-bro cousin ... the list goes on.

But pause for a moment—they've got those ideas about you, too. So, surprise them. Dodge the "how's work, family, dating, life?" questions and cut right to the cool stuff. At my family reunion, I revealed that I had a new interest in foraging mushrooms, and it turned out my cousin who wears cowboy boots and has three kids has sparked the same interest in wild foraging. Instead of suffering through pleasantries, we talked about herbs and medicinal fungi.

Treat your family like strangers worth getting to know even if it feels like you know everything about them.

Get Outside
Whether you're visiting your childhood home or your family has moved somewhere new while you've been off doing your own thing, if you're in someone else's home for the holiday, treat it like a trip and be a tourist there. Even if it just means walking the neighborhood and exploring a park, treating even your hometown like a new place can help shake off stress.

Are there hikes in the area you've meant to do but never got around to? If your family lives in Utah, chances are there's some hidden wonder within a 20-minute drive. When I'm at my childhood home, I always make a point to visit the hot springs that are currently super Instagram famous—and just minutes from my parents' place.

Make Light of It
If you're starting to really get bored or antsy, start a secret little drinking game out of family cliches with a cool sibling, cousin or a partner who knows your fam well enough. Every time someone complains about the thermostat's temperature, take a swig. Your mom hollering for your dad to come fix something? Drink. A piece of local gossip is brought up? Big drink. Or, bring your family in on the fun and ditch the drinking.

Hallmark holiday movies are perpetually on my mom's TV over the holidays so, this year, I'm bringing down some homemade Hallmark trope-themed bingo cards and inviting everyone to play while we watch one (or three). This could be used for any number of traditional holiday movies or shows, and it's much more engaging than just sitting and watching TV.