All Is Calmish
How to Feel Less Frantic and More Festive During the Holidays
by Niro Feliciano
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Pub Date Oct 14 2025 | Archive Date Dec 07 2025
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Description
“Feliciano’s psychological insights are well balanced by funny, down-to-earth recollections of her own holiday mishaps. . . . This’ll go a long way toward helping readers find merriment when things feel anything but festive.”
—Publishers Weekly
Stop forcing holiday cheer and start embracing the season in a way that truly resonates with you. Discover simple, daily strategies for cultivating peace, balance, and genuine joy as you navigate the holidays with grace.
Merry and bright? Yeah, right. During the holidays, many of us are anything but cheerful. Thanksgiving, Diwali, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year's often make us frazzled and frantic. Stressed and stretched. Distressed and depressed.
From psychotherapist Niro Feliciano, author of This Book Won't Make You Happy and frequent TODAY show contributor, comes a book to help you move beyond holiday pressures and maintain perspective when it matters most. All Is Calmish dispenses a therapist's strategies for surviving the season. As a mother of four and sought-after expert on mental health, Feliciano sees our valiant attempts to be happy and create a magical holiday. Meanwhile we are actually exhausted and anxious from managing family drama, loneliness, grief, crazy schedules, and overwhelming debt. The truth is, the holidays can be the hardest time of the year. But with Feliciano's help, they don't have to be.
In thirty-one short chapters, Feliciano gives us daily prompts and rituals rooted in research, brain science, and the wisdom of spiritual traditions, to help us set boundaries, create meaningful connections, start new traditions, and manage the season with greater ease.
While the holidays may not be perfect, All Is Calmish reminds us that with intention and grace, we can still make them meaningful and memorable, finding our way to wholeness and well-being--and maybe even something that feels a bit like calm.
Advance Praise
“With warmth, wisdom, and a voice that feels like a trusted friend, Niro Feliciano reminds us that the holidays don’t have to be perfect to be meaningful. All Is Calmish offers the grace and guidance we need to embrace the season with more ease and less stress.”
—Craig Melvin, cohost of NBC’s TODAY show
“Niro Feliciano gets it—our stress, our striving, our deep desire to make the holidays meaningful without losing ourselves in the process. All Is Calmish is the kind of book that takes your hand, reminds you to exhale, and gently leads you back to perspective. With wisdom, honesty, and heart, Feliciano walks with us toward a season that feels lighter, freer, and true to who we are.”
—Julie Lythcott-Haims, New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult, Real American, and Your Turn: How to Be an Adult
“If you’ve ever tried to understand how to navigate life’s chaos with clarity, then you need this book, because Niro Feliciano has put all of that wisdom in one place. All Is Calmish is the guide we all need to find peace in the midst of the holiday madness, no matter what life throws our way. This is the book you will want year-round, but especially for the holidays!”
—Tamsen Fadal, journalist, podcaster, and New York Times bestselling author of How to Menopause
“Niro Feliciano is a voice I trust completely when it comes to my life and relationships. I’m so thankful this book is in the world so others can be impacted by what she has to say.”
—Rachel Cruze, #1 New York Times bestselling author, podcast host, and financial expert
“Anytime Niro Feliciano speaks, we listen. Whether it’s parenting, family dynamics, or social interactions at home or at work, Feliciano’s advice is always spot-on, practical, and actionable. Her book is full of real-life holiday scenarios and solutions. A practical survival guide and helpful read!”
—Vicky Nguyen, cohost of NBC News Now and bestselling author of Boat Baby
“Thanks to the wisdom of my dear friend Niro Feliciano, we can be honest about all that the holidays are—and are not. We can be present. We can participate in a true sense of wonder. We can reconnect to a place of hope. And we can find our own version of calmish. This book will help you discover how.”
—Sissy Goff, LPC-MHSP, therapist, bestselling author of The Worry-Free Parent, and cohost of the Raising Boys and Girls podcast
“All Is Calmish is filled with equal parts wisdom and warmth. Feliciano has a knack for weaving together personal insights, professional expertise, and compelling narratives. Although this book is perfect for the holidays, I know I’ll be recommending it throughout the year!”
—Saumya Dave, psychiatrist and author of The Guilt Pill
“Although the holidays are intended to be a time of meaningful connection and enjoyment, they can be full of stress and pressure. What if it could be different? What if you had a wise, steady, trusted guide to help you find your way to something more peaceful and hopeful? You are holding a road map, written by a gifted clinician and mother of four, who will feel like your new best friend. This should be a required read for every one of us before the holidays arrive each year.”
—David Thomas, therapist, bestselling author of Raising Emotionally Strong Boys, and cohost of the Raising Boys and Girls podcast
“Some people just radiate calm—and Niro Feliciano is one of them! Now she’s letting us in on her secret to letting peace and joy reinvigorate a busy home. Holiday stress has met its match, and I’m so thankful for this powerful guide.”
—Kari Kampakis, bestselling author of Love Her Well and Yours, Not Hers, and host of the Girl Mom Podcast
“All Is Calmish is like having a therapist and a best friend reminding you to set boundaries, drop the guilt, and actually enjoy the holiday season. If you’re done feeling drained by the holidays, this book is a must-read for finding balance and peace and reclaiming your joy!”
—Terri Cole, psychotherapist, author, and podcast host
Marketing Plan
National and online publicity campaign targeting mainstream media, self-help media, and women's media
Social media campaign targeting self-help readers and women
Email outreach to past purchasers of Feliciano's first book, This Book Won't Make You Happy
Seasonal outreach during Holiday campaign and New Years Resolution intention setting
Author launch team
Influencer campaign
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781506498348 |
| PRICE | $25.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 205 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Average rating from 4 members
Featured Reviews
Reviewer 318610
If you’ve ever stood in a Target aisle holding three rolls of glitter wrapping paper and one existential crisis, “All Is Calmish” gets it. Niro Feliciano is not here to pretend the holidays are a Norman Rockwell painting. She’s here with a warm mug of reality, a therapist’s toolkit, and the emotional equivalent of a wine-sipping nod that says, “Same.”
This book is not a holiday how-to. It’s not gonna teach you how to fold your napkins into tiny Christmas swans or DIY your way into a Pinterest board. What it does do is pull you out of that mental spiral where one missed cookie exchange feels like a personal failure. Feliciano writes like your friend who has definitely cried in a CVS parking lot but still managed to find a little peace and peppermint mocha in the chaos. It’s part guide, part group text with your emotionally intelligent bestie, and part workbook your therapist would gently suggest but with way better vibes.
She starts with full honesty: holidays with kids (or without, TBH) require supernatural powers. There’s a hilarious line about to-do lists resembling CVS receipts that genuinely made me wheeze. You know the ones. You could wrap a tree with them. From that moment on, you’re in good hands. She walks us through her own hot cocoa-induced meltdown, a night spent up until 4 a.m. wrapping presents and losing her damn mind, and the now-legendary internal scream that declared, “No more.” Iconic behavior.
Feliciano is a psychotherapist, sure, but she’s also a woman who has made the holiday hot chocolate bar her villain origin story. She’s not just diagnosing our collective stress spiral, she’s lived it. That blend of clinical insight and personal disaster-girl storytelling is the magic here. One minute she’s giving you grounded, research-backed advice on cognitive reframing, the next she’s dragging your inner perfectionist through the snow like it owes her money. (It does.)
The chapters are quick but potent, like holiday espresso shots of sanity. Each ends with “Baby, Stay Calm Inside” prompts, which sound like a Mariah Carey cover but are actually mini therapy sessions in disguise. They’re the kind of questions that seem cute until you’re suddenly having a feelings moment about your mom, your time management, and why you keep saying yes to Secret Santa when it makes you want to scream into a throw pillow.
There’s a soft spirituality threaded through the book, but it’s not preachy. It’s more like a hug for your overwhelmed soul. Whether your holidays include Jesus, eight nights of candles, or just a strong need to lie down in a dark room, this book meets you there. It’s inclusive, compassionate, and so deeply rooted in humanity that even the chaos feels sacred. Ish.
What I love most? She never promises peace will come gift-wrapped. Feliciano just helps you reframe the mess, set actual boundaries (wild concept), and breathe through the parts that aren’t joyful or triumphant. Sometimes presence is the miracle.
I gave it 4.5 stars, because it’s insightful without being smug, funny without being flippant, and most importantly, it made me feel like maybe I don’t have to be both Buddy the Elf and a functioning adult from November to January.
Merry Mayhem Prize: For Weaponizing the CVS Receipt as a Seasonal Metaphor
Huge thanks to Broadleaf Books and NetGalley for the ARC. This book might save me from holiday burnout and at least three passive-aggressive group texts.
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