Unhappy Holidays a Welcome Pause Amid End-of-Year Hubbub

By Jen Gilhoi

Dissonance’s third annual Unhappy Holidays event on Dec. 20 seemed to perfectly coincide with the very necessary need to hit the holiday-stress pause button. It came at a time when people were facing lengthy to-do lists and last-minute deadlines before the holiday break. It came at time when anticipation, anxiety and maybe even depressive thoughts were on the rise. It came when a pause was needed.

Dissonance’s alternative holiday gathering once again brought people together without alcohol, other substances or any of the season’s typical expectations. The evening kicked off with “Christmas Wish,” a song created and performed by Katy Vernon, Dissonance board member and ukulele songbird, a singer of sad songs on a happy instrument. The song is about missing loved ones during the holidays and was inspired by Katy’s work with Dissonance and reflections on the first Christmas her 12 year-old self spent without her mom, who had passed. The lilt of the ukulele hinted at happy, with grief and loss woven between, capturing the Dissonance vibe to a T.

Dissonance co-founder Sarah Souder Johnson welcomed everyone and walked through a breathing exercise to bring us into the present. Carl Atiya-Swanson, outgoing Dissonance board member, then took the stage as emcee to start the conversation with panelists about their art, the dissonance they experience in their lives and how they stay well (#howdoyoustaywell).

Comedian Brandi Brown—co-host of the podcast, “Bill Corbett’s Funhouse;” frequent blogger; and much more—covered topics from blackness, therapy and the St. Paul-Minneapolis rivalry to being Minnesotan on the East Coast. With her no-nonsense wit, Brandi shared one of her strategies for managing time, stress and her attention-deficit disorder: “Say no; saying no saves a lot of lives.” She also highly recommended therapy, and not just because it’s “a free workshop for jokes.”

Award-winning writer, community leader and activist Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay grew up in St. Paul as a refugee from Laos. Her story is certainly no joke. But she has a wit of her own, and there is a childlike lightness in her beautifully illustrated book, When Everything Was Everything. The audience listened intently as Saymoukda and her publisher read from the book on stage and shared vivid imagery of everything from bowl haircuts to hand-me-down jeans, worn while working in cucumber fields. The book represents a poetic slice of her life, hinting at the residual optimism she may have inherited from her mother.

Throughout the evening, artists shared their views and experiences with self-care and wellbeing, discussing not-so-easy-to-accept truths about their health and the actionable practices that help them. Musician Chris Tait, founder of Passenger Recovery, a Detroit-based nonprofit that helps touring musicians and travelers find support away from home, shared a story of a Saskatoon gig that shed clear light on the need for support, safe spaces and community while on the road.

Wellbeing for Chris, keyboardist for indie rock vets Electric Six, starts with self-awareness about the nature of his life as an artist and the reality of his life in recovery from addiction. For example, while it’s easy to inwardly focus in a creative songwriting zone, Chris says he’s acutely aware of the need to balance that with plenty of time spent outside of his own headspace, focused on others. Chris shared two songs—Oh Severed Head and Jonathan Turtle—that provided humorous food-for-thought, punctuated by surprising kazoo and whistling solos.

Lydia Liza shared her journey from a 16-year-old prodigy thrust early into an adult career to the 24-year-old woman today that is excelling musically and personally, after giving up alcohol and working on co-dependency issues. With her song I Just Want To Know You More, she sang about being in a relationship or space because you think it’s safe, rather than because it’s fulfilling or benefiting anyone. Heck yeah, she’s in recovery now and living her daily “citizen-life” while being creative. Of the challenges balancing health and work in the music business, she said: if you love your creative being enough, you will find the balance.

Will she find that balance on Twitter? Maybe not. Lydia touched on her 2016 remake of the holiday standard, Baby It’s Cold Outside, with Josiah Lemanski—a recording that went viral, gaining national attention for its message about the importance of consent in relationships. Proceeds from the song all go to The Sexual Violence Center of Minnesota; the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence; and the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, meaning the “trolls” on Twitter who blast the song as political-correctness-run-amok only support her cause by continuing to bring attention to it with their personal attacks. With that in mind,, Lydia said she has had some fun taking on the Twitter trolls but acknowledged that it all wears on her a bit. Brandi used her phone to pull up @lydializamusic on Twitter and handed the phone to Lydia so she could share some of the comments and her responses. Lydia said she enjoys the opportunity to be sassy, put the trolls in their place, and bring more attention to her cause but added that, for her own health and wellbeing, it’s best to put limits on her engagement.

We ended on a high note of acceptance. Group consensus built around the idea that it’s not a lot of fun to take our own advice or to look objectively and honestly at ourselves, but it’s necessary. Restore, compassion, honesty , authenticity—words and themes shared by our artists to close out the evening—wrapped up Unhappy Holidays in a bright red bow for all to take into the final days of the year. Happy Holidays!

Dissonance provides resources and actionable tools to stay healthy over the holidays and always. Shout-out to our amazing partners for the evening! They included our resource providers—MPR’s Art of Counseling (@ArtOfCounseling), Call to Mind (@CallToMindNow), The Emily Program Foundation (@EmilyProgram), the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation (@hazldnbettyford), Lyn-Lake Psychotherapy and Wellness, and Recovree (@recovree)—and our alcohol-free beverage partners, Hobby Farmer Switchel (on Instagram at @hobbyfarmercanning_co) and Hairless Dog (on Instagram at @hairless_dog_brewing).

Jen Gilhoi is a Dissonance board member.

Tearing Down the Walls

By Mariah Wills

I've spent the better part of the past year in excavation mode, tearing down walls. I can’t remember when it exactly started, but at some point along the way I realized I was sick of living within the boundaries of what was comfortable. So, I gathered some courage and started digging, and piece by piece, brick by brick, I've been tearing down the fortress I've been building for years. 

These days, openness looks a lot like shaky hands and stumbling words. I've never been good at talking about the hard stuff; in fact, I'm notoriously good at avoiding the hard stuff all together. But, as I've discovered time and again, this does nothing but make things worse. So here I am laying out the mess and holding up a sign inviting others to do the same—to put aside the facade of perfection and sit a moment with the hard stuff. This doesn't mean dwelling on your struggles or defining yourself by them. It means simply acknowledging them—sharing the not-so-pretty parts of life, the parts that play just as much of a role in shaping us as the good parts do. Our stories have so much more power than we realize, and when we share them, we have the ability to reach others, to make someone else dealing with similar things feel a lot less alone. 

My own story revolves around mental health. My experience with mental illness and recovery began when I was diagnosed with anorexia at the age of 10. At a time when most kids should be worried about sleepovers and soccer games, I worried about measurements and nutrition facts, suffocating myself with the need for perfection and control in my life. I spent the summer between fourth and fifth grade in an intensive outpatient therapy program. There, I learned about the role mental health plays in physical health and how inseparable the two really are. As if this wasn’t enough to wrap my head around as a fourth grader, my doctor also diagnosed me with generalized anxiety disorder, explaining that other conditions, like anorexia, can manifest as a result, or in a co-occurring fashion. 

There is certainly no standard experience of anxiety, but for me, it feels a lot like running a race without sight of the finish line. My back stiffens, my throat constricts, and I lose the ability to think about anything else. I get anxiety about most things, both big and small. Rationally, I know it isn’t warranted and it doesn’t make sense, but once it starts, the panic sticks in my mind, burrowing itself further into my brain and seeping down into every inch of my body. Anxiety is a natural part of life, but anxiety disorders differ in that the feeling doesn’t rise and fall like natural emotion; it is much harder to control.

Since that therapy program years ago, my journey with anxiety and mental health has been admittedly messy. For a long time, I kept that summer, and every appointment and treatment that followed, very quiet. Alongside the embarrassment and shame that often comes with mental illness, I’ve always felt a certain sense of guilt about it as well. What right do I have to be sad and anxious when there are other people who have it way worse than I do? What if I had to face problems that were bigger than these ones; how would I even be able to handle it? But this is the problem with mental illness. So often, we don’t talk about it because of these feelings of shame and guilt, and as a result, it makes the situation that much harder to overcome.

Last year at this time, I began taking medication for my anxiety. This decision came at a time in my life when I should have been the most happy and fulfilled. I was in school working toward a career I am passionate about, surrounded by friends and family who are as supportive and loving as can be, and I felt more driven and determined than I ever have before. However, at the same time, I felt like I was gripping on to all of it by the skin of my teeth. I came home every day exhausted from nothing but battling my own mind—my anxiety robbing me of the happiness that I knew I should have felt, that I so desperately wanted to relish in.

Because of my experiences, I have always tried to support others in their decisions to improve their mental health. However, when it came to my own journey, I couldn’t help but feel it was a massive defeat. I remember watching my doctor as she wrote out the prescription I had been avoiding for years. I have always prided myself on being independent, able to fix my own problems if need be. So, as she went on to describe how the medication, combined with other forms of treatment would help to “fix” my anxiety, I couldn’t help but think I should have been able to “fix” this myself.

It was during this time that I came across Dissonance at a concert for one of my favorite artists, Your Smith. Board members were there talking to concert-goers about mental health and recovery and selling T-shirts created in collaboration with Your Smith, then known as Caroline Smith. The T-shirts—both a Dissonance outreach campaign and a fundraiser for the nonprofit—featured a quote from Caroline: “Literally everyone can benefit from therapy.” I am not usually someone who looks for signs, but something about the way they spoke about mental health in such a casual and supportive way stuck with me. That night, something shifted in the way I viewed my situation. Slowly I began to open up, first to family and then to friends, pouring out the ugly, the uncomfortable, and the strange. To my surprise, I found that as I opened up to others, they began to feel comfortable enough to open up to me about their experiences as well. All this time, I had been dealing with these things alone, while some of the people closest to me were dealing with them, too.  

So today, I am trying to remain open and honest. I don’t talk about these things to be weird or depressing. I talk about them because—although they do not define me—they make up a part of who I am. Maybe these things play a role in your life too, and maybe, like me, you need someone to reach out and say, “me too.” We all deserve to be loved and known for our most authentic selves. Until we start sharing our stories, bearing our mess, and listening to each other, we cannot truly be understood. So grab your shovel, and let’s get to work.

Mariah Wills is a student at the University of St. Thomas and a Dissonance board intern.

See Mariah and the rest of the Dissonance crew on Dec. 20, 2018, at the third annual Unhappy Holidays event in St. Paul. It’s free, but seats are limited, so please reserve yours ASAP.