The Stress-free Art of Hosting | #28

Dropping expectations and curating conversations and good company

Hey all,

I am writing to you from an in-person authoring circle, here in Costa Rica!

I’m at Foster’s annual winter retreat for the week. We will be writing, surfing, chilling, and doing other wholesome things like aguahara, sound healing and ecstatic dance.

I feel really grounded and peaceful in the company of my writing friends and yet I feel excited and wide-eyed about the experiences and journey we will go on this week.

More on this retreat in the next newsletter. Let’s dive into what I wanna explore today👇🏽:

A couple of weeks ago, my mum and I hosted twenty friends for dinner at my place in London. It’d become a ritual of sorts, that when my parents visit London, I host a dinner party with mum so my friends can have a feast of the food of my hometown specifically cooked by my mum. Another important reason for me to host these dinners is that my parents live far away and don’t get to be involved in my day-to-day life so I want them to have an evening with my friends and a window into people in my life.  

Hosting dinners is something I’ve done most of my adult life. It is probably something I picked up from my mum. My mum is a social butterfly, which means that I grew up in an environment where there were constantly big parties. As an example, for my brother’s first birthday, while we were still living in Malaysia, we had hundreds of guests. We had a band of five or so play live music, we had buffet catering, I think we might even have had a clown earlier in the day -- it was a full-day affair.  

My mum is also a fantastic cook, like I mean better than a lot of restaurants. And for that, I have always been blessed with good food. The combination of social butterfly and good cook makes for the perfect host. It was normal on an almost weekly basis to have people over for dinner or for a bigger gathering on a monthly basis. 

As I grew up, I started to throw my own gatherings too. But the truth is I have never fully been able to enjoy a party I hosted myself. I always felt like there was never enough time in the lead up to these parties. Quite often, I’d still be getting ready as guests started to arrive. More than that, I always put a lot of pressure on myself to hold space for everyone else, caring and catering for them. As the host, every guest who arrives wants to say hi and thank you for the invite or hand you a card or the food they brought to chip in, you are also the point person from doorbells, to water to finding the bathroom. While the idea of bringing people together has always been something I’ve done without a question, I realised that I’ve often found it much harder to be present with each conversation, feel at ease and to have a good time.   

Last night was a true milestone in my history of hosting dinner parties or parties for that matter. I was dressed and ready by the time guests were starting to arrive. This is rare for me. I was able to help my mum without stressing out. I was then able to ease into host mode while being fully present to each person by sitting with each guest to catch up with them for a good period of time. I was intentionally not keeping my eye on the clock, keeping myself deep in the conversation to hear about their latest and share mine. I did this as much as I could with every guest despite being inevitably drawn away by mum or a guest asking for something. 

This change emerged out of my daily practice of presencing and grounding. Being intentional with my time and setting aside time to do activities that grounds me like walking 10k steps a day, journaling, sauna/cold plunges and yoga. This was also field by realising how deeply I wanted to be able to experience life without rushing or time zooming by in front of my eyes. It isn’t that the dinner parties changed, it was more that I, as a person, had slowly become someone who is able to feel less rushed and stressed by being at the centre of an event.  

Part of that change was also driven by a slow ability to let go of expectations. And specifically around how the dinner party should turn out and how much time is the perfect amount of time to spend with each guest.

The stress-free art of hosting made me think about how often we probably don’t enjoy the things that look glamorous on the outside -- weddings, big parties, digital nomad life, and how often we may not even realise that. The shift from stressful hosting to stress-free hosting made me realise it is possible to do these things in a stress-free way if we are aware of what causes it to be stressful. For me it was working with lowering my perfectionism, the ability to let go of expectations and choosing to be present with each moment rather than ruthlessly strategizing what each moment should look like. 

In 2024, I want to get back to hosting regular dinners, bringing people together around food and good conversation. I want to continue feeling the low glow of personally curating good conversation with good company. Realising that I can not only play host but also take part in truly deepening into the relationships with those I bring together makes me really excited for more gatherings. 

Logging off for the week to enjoy Costa Rica, and good company here in full.

Caryn x