The holidays can be a difficult time for many people, for many reasons. There are the expectations — to participate fully, to spend profligately, to performatively have a good time. But the holidays can also be a wonderful, emotionally fulfilling period of quality time spent with loved ones and opportunities to treat yourself.
Grieving, of course, complicates both the good and the bad of the holiday season. Grief does not go away at this time of year and can, in fact, be heightened; holiday traditions may trigger specific memories of your lost loved one, which can be painful, bittersweet, wonderful — or all three, or some other combination of emotions. What’s important to remember at this time of year (and always) is that grief and bereavement look different for different people at different times. People often talk about “firsts” after a death, such as the first birthday, the first back-to-school season, or the first Christmas without your loved one, because these are moments when the loss can feel especially acute. But even if you’ve already experienced a holiday season (or multiple) since your loved one died, grief is not linear, and you may be dreading this holiday season more than you expected, because you know during this period that the deceased’s absence will be painfully obvious.
According to Mary-Frances O’Connor, a psychologist and author of The Grieving Brain, our traditions are encoded in our brains, and when we come upon one that has been so drastically altered by the irrevocable absence of a loved one, “we can’t function in the world in the same way.”
“Suddenly, every plan that is in place has a hole in it where that person should be,” she told Washington Post columnist Steven Petrow last November, which means our “internal map of the world no longer matches up with the world itself.”
Regardless of where you are in your grief journey, there are ways you can make this holiday season easier on yourself. Below, we share five ways to help you make it through the holidays.
#1. First and foremost, give yourself grace.
Do not be hard on yourself. You may have expectations for how you will react throughout the season, but you might end up feeling totally differently; let yourself feel whatever you’re feeling. Acknowledge your pain.
“Grief is very tiring and — even under the best of circumstances — holidays are very taxing,” William G. Hoy, a professor of medical humanities at Baylor University, explained in a blog post published by the university last year. Listening to yourself when you need to rest and recuperate is hugely important.
Remember that grief comes in waves, and you may feel multiple different emotions throughout the course of the season, for different reasons.
Megan Devine, an author and grief advocate, reminds us that we can feel multiple, seemingly conflicting emotions at once. “Gratitude and grief don’t cancel each other out, they sit side by side,” she wrote in a blog post about handling Thanksgiving as a grieving person.
Balance out listening to and making space for your emotions.
#2. Don’t isolate yourself.
It’s important to keep track of your social battery and not put yourself in situations where you will be overwhelmed. Interacting with your support system and feeling lifted is an important and you deserve it.
“Being in community with others is very beneficial for your mental health,” Candi Cann, a Baylor religion professor who researches death and dying, said.
Keeping yourself from doing the things you love and being with the people you love may make a bad mental health situation even worse.
To make the best out of these situations and make sure your cup is filled when you do attend social gatherings.
#3. Tell others what you need.
This is important to remember year-round, but especially during what’s often a very busy and emotionally loaded time. Your loved one may be even more in your thoughts than usual; your grief may feel near; or your emotions might shift in any number of other ways. And even if you feel you are usually proactive about telling your support system what you need, the busy-ness of the season — and others’ own emotional shifts during the holidays — means you may need to vocalize your needs more often, in clearer terms, or otherwise differently.
If you don’t have the energy or emotional bandwidth to talk specifically with everyone you love about how they can support you this time of year, Megan Devine has compiled a list of 10 tips for supporting a grieving person that you can share to make sure you’re getting what you need.
#4. Make new traditions
So many of our holiday traditions are place- and event-based, and that can be too hard to stomach when you’re grieving.
Creating a new tradition can be a meaningful solution. That might mean celebrating with different people this year, or traveling to a different place, or even just attending a new holiday event you never went to before.
You need to be able to grieve on your own terms, and if you don’t feel you can do that in your typical holiday situation, give yourself permission to change the program. This can also be freeing: When you’re doing something new, you can’t compare it to previous years.
A new tradition doesn’t mean leaving the person you lost behind, either. There are so many ways you can include their memory, depending on what you choose to do. You can play their favorite song, drink their favorite drink, make the joke they always made… Doing something new doesn’t mean forgetting your loved one; it merely gives you room to breathe.
#5. Share stories about your loved one.
Even though you may be doing something entirely different this year, holding your loved one in your heart — and the hearts of those around you — keeps their memory alive and helps keep them a part of the holiday.
In her blog about how to support a grieving person during the holidays, Devine writes that people should not “be afraid to share memories about [the deceased]. Use their name in conversation” — and that goes just as well for you, the grieving person. They are still a big part of your life, and there’s no reason to feel uncomfortable talking about them.
Sometimes, it might make you emotional to tell these stories, but that’s okay! Ultimately, talking about a person you lost with other loved ones — especially if it’s a recollection the others haven’t heard before — is a meaningful way to connect, acknowledge the loss, and still hold the memories dear.
Resources
Visit our Bookshop page to purchase Mary-Frances O’Connor’s book, The Grieving Brain, and Megan Devine’s book, It’s OK That You’re Not OK.