Grieving During the Holidays
Surviving the Holidays When Someone You Love Has Died
Getting through the holiday season is tough for many of us, but those living with the loss of a loved one have the hardest time. The gap left by a loss is felt most poignantly during this traditional time of celebration, family reunion and family closeness. Holidays, like anniversaries, are by nature nostalgic, and even the happiest of memories are painful, not joyous, when we are grieving.
We may need extra help for surviving the holiday season if we are in the midst of grief. Following are a number of survival strategies. Using these suggestions won’t necessarily take your grief away, but they can help you manage your grief at a time of the year when the world is supposed to by joyous.
Survival Strategies for the Holidays:
Be kind to yourself.
This is the time when it is important to take good care of yourself. Nothing you do will make a bigger difference than respecting yourself, your needs and your feelings. Handling your emotions may be the only job you can manage right now. Because no one knows your needs as well as you do, you need to notice them and honor them. Don’t overwhelm yourself just because it is the holiday season. Instead, do only as much as you can comfortably manage. Get the rest and nourishment and affection you need. Choose what’s best for you—to be with people or to spend time along, to be immersed in the holiday spirit or not.
Express your feelings.
The surest road through grief is to feel it, not deny it. If you are hurting, the best advice is to allow your feelings. Cry if you need to cry, rage if you need to rage. Admit the longings, the loneliness or whatever you are feeling. Don’t suppress yourself. Feelings expressed ultimately disappear, but when you suppress yourself, nothing changes.
Ask for what you need.
Other people do not know how you feel unless you tell them. Don’t just go along with people or plans that are not for you. Tell people what would help you most. Speak up!
Friends and relatives may think you will feel better if you do not talk about your loss, or they may be afraid to upset you my mentioning the missing person. If you want to talk about the person who is gone, say so. If you want your privacy respected, if you need companionship or if you want a shoulder to cry on, say so. People outside your grief may feel awkward and not know what to do. As much as they want to help, they need you to direct them.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help with planning, shopping, entertaining or just getting through today. As hard as it may be to ask, force yourself. Ultimately, asking will make your life a little easier. If you cannot shop or decorate this year, ask a friend, relative, hospice or other social agency volunteer to help. What looks arduous to you may be a lot of fun for someone else. As hard as it may be to imagine, remember that serving you can be very satisfying and rewarding for the other person.
Create support for yourself.
Sharing your pain eases it. Be sure you have people with whom you can talk. Most of us can cope best with tough times if we have a loving presence—a relative or friend to walk with us through this painful time. When spouses or family members hurt as much as you do and cannot be a support, find an alternative. Look for a short-term support partner, perhaps a friend, another person in grief, a relative, a counselor. Or, create a small group of people who have similar concerns with whom you can stay in touch daily or frequently through the holidays or beyond. Support people and support groups really help.
Help another person in need.
Contributing to someone else gets your attention off yourself. Helping another can be a very effective way of healing after a loss because when you are immersed in someone else’s needs, you can be free of your own distress and pain. If you have the energy, there are many people who need you. Some possibilities are to volunteer to be with older folks or children, to help in a hospital or a soup kitchen, or to help a friend in need over the holidays.
Appreciate your other loved ones.
Enjoy the people you love. It is natural to feel alone in your grief and to isolate yourself, yet that closes off all chances for closeness and nourishment from other people. Don’t deprive your children, spouses, other loved ones or yourself. As hard as it may be to get your attention off your loss, they need your love, too. And in return, their love can nourish you and help you begin to heal.
Don’t compare your life with other people’s.
Feeling jealous of intact families and feeling deprived are natural reactions after a loss—as if other families are happier than yours, as if other people have what you do not. We have a lot of illusions about how other people live.
Don’t try to compare lives—it only adds to your misery. Embracing what you have gives you much more power than regretting what is missing.
Resolving how or where to spend the holidays.
Choosing how or where to spend the holidays may be your biggest dilemma. There is no perfect solution. Holiday time may be hard no matter what you do or where you are. In fact, it may seem as if you are trying to pick the best from some rotten alternatives. The choices: celebrate as usual, avoid the holidays altogether, or do something brand new.
Celebrating as usual.
Many people wish to keep their holiday traditions intact, to celebrate as usual. This way is bound to be painful, accentuating the gap left by the loss. It is fine to follow family traditions as long as you know they cannot be the same as before your loved one died. Pretending you can recreate the past will only cause you more grief. Just remember to allow any feelings as they occur. If you have the energy to do so, following old traditions may enhance your self-esteem and may help you manage the holidays successfully.
Avoiding the holidays.
It is not wrong to want to avoid Christmas or other holidays entirely. If celebrating seems too difficult to bear, you can choose not to observe the holidays and go somewhere else—skiing, a cruise, a resort, a different city. If you cannot afford to travel, go to the zoo or the movies or some other distracting place. There is not guarantee that this will erase your pain, but it may lessen it some.
Doing something new and different.
If NOT celebrating would deeply disappoint or deprive children or other family members, you probably cannot run away from Thanksgiving or Christmas. Yet, you can avoid repeating your traditional ways and perhaps observe your holidays more simply than before. People often work too hard cooking, decorating, planning, shopping and entertaining at holiday times, so you can at least ease up.
Often, the more we try to recreate the past, the more obvious is our loss, so changing traditions can be a freeing and satisfying way to spend the season. You can celebrate Thanksgiving, Hanukkah or Christmas in a brand new way be going to the home of a different relative or friend, having a family reunion away from home, or eating in a restaurant. You can do anything that will make your holiday experience new rather than a memory with someone in it missing.
If it is too hard for you, personally, to think up a new way to do the holidays, give the job of planning to a creative friend or relative. Again, most important, in taking care of yourself—is not to feel you have to do it all—whatever the circumstances.
You will survive the holidays.
You may hurt, but you will survive. The holidays may be the worst of your grief time. Eventually, you will heal, and your memories will persist without pain. Meanwhile, it’s okay not to have a good time. There may be no way you can make this holiday fun and nothing you want to do. Allow that you may not enjoy the parties, reunions and events of the season. If you are hurting and unable or unwilling to have your attention on anything else, let yourself be.
It is also okay to have a good time, even though you have experienced a loss. You do not have to deny pleasure to yourself or your family. While grieving, we often feel guilty about having fun, as if we should be miserable all twenty-four house of a day. That is not necessary. Often, we think it is how much we grieve that signifies how much we care about the one who died. Not true! Our love is not measured by the extent of our grief. We can love forever without having grief as our testimonial to that love. Remember, few of us would want others to be forever bereft because we were gone.
Perhaps the best testimonial we can give to our missing loved ones in how we live our lives. Don’t deny yourself life because someone has died. If you can do so, enjoy the holidays and every day; for death teaches us, more than anything, that every day of life is precious and worth living to the fullest. The best gift we can give ourselves and others for the holidays and every day is to live our lives wholeheartedly.
“The Holiday Army”, by Andrea Gambill
Here it comes again—the Holiday Army—in its annual march against us. Some of its generals are called “Thanksgiving,” “Christmas,” “Hanukah,” “New Year’s Eve” and “New Year’s Day.” They are no respecters of the heartbroken and emotionally wounded, and their troops are merciless. They take no prisoners! They demand that we participate in their joy and nostalgia or they will mow us down with their militant tanks of holiday spirit.
Sometimes they declare their war on us openly — without shame or remorse. Sometimes, they wait for us in ambush. Their intelligence operators have been working diligently all year, waiting for the Thanksgiving Day (or sometimes Halloween!) trumpet signal to begin their attack. They just don’t seem satisfied to have their celebrations and parties and dinners and festivities unless they can recruit ALL of us into their ranks.
Actually, we wish them well. All we really want is for them to leave us alone and let us mourn in peace and quiet. We prefer our “Silent Nights” to their “Deck the Halls” and Jingle Bells.” We don’t intentionally spoil their fun, it’s just that our pain makes them uncomfortable. They’ve been conditioned to believe that “The Holiday Season” should have no blemish of suffering or lack of frivolity. We must not only bandage our wounds while in their presence, but cover them with taffeta and sequins besides. They are convinced that all we need is to “put on a happy face” and all our sorrows will magically evaporate.
In their mad pursuit of happiness, they shoot us with the bullets of shopping, piped-in music, special holiday foods and fragrances, gift wrapping, decorations (especially the angels!), joyous children with happy smiles, cards, invitations, parties and gift exchanges. Any other time of the year, snow is considered a nuisance to shovel and plow through. At the holiday season, though, it is touted as romantic and is linked to sleighs and starry nights in front of fireplaces, snuggled close to those we love.
The most devastating bombs they drop into our lives are the images of reunion — times of greeting and hugging folks who are much loved and sometimes not often seen for awhile. They may only be separated by geography; our absent loved ones cannot cross the chasm of loss that looms before our tear-filled eyes. They remind us of things we should be thankful for (and we are more thankful for many of those things than they can ever imagine). They prod us with their spears of delightful togetherness, never realizing that what they celebrate is what we cannot now enjoy. We would not dream of attacking them in these battles for holiday survival. With our noses pressed against the glass that divides us, we actually long to be able to be part of their happiness. We remember the times we joined in their fun and we, too, were part of their army of nostalgia and joy.
Our broken hearts and bleeding wounds do not excuse us from being gracious, however. While grief does not give us permission to be rude and selfish, and we take no overt action against their aggression, we are not without defenses in these battles. We can shield ourselves with the armor of dignity with kind but direct and simple explanations: “We understand your need for celebration, but this year we prefer quiet and private reflection and meditation.” “Right now it’s hard for us to function in large groups and to appreciate laughter and high spirits.” “Our energy is so limited; we’d appreciate some quiet one-on-one time with you in a more spiritual atmosphere.” We can gently remind them of how important it is for us to remember those we love who are gone. These are statements that clarify our position without judging or criticizing them for theirs. In kind and non-threatening ways, we need to tell them what’s good for us, because they won’t think of it on their own, and they can use the education.
We also can exercise the muscles of our sense of humor. It will take some effort on our part, but so does anything that is worthwhile and good for us. We can teach ourselves not to fall into the trap of thinking that our grief makes us the center of the universe. We can limit our demands that others treat us in “special” and “deferential” ways because of our pain. We can cut them a little slack and remember that once upon a time, we were just like they are now. It’s good and healthy for us to review our perspectives now and then and decide if we’re being fair and reasonable.
We can express our love in simple and unhurried ways without all the frenetic, expensive and often hysterical hype that the holidays can generate. And we must exercise the expression of our love. Grief does not rob us of our ability to love; it reminds us ever more dramatically of our need to both give and receive love while we are here.
Whenever we can take some control in our situations, we empower ourselves, and then we feel less like victims in what seems like a war of “peace on earth, goodwill toward men.” Anytime we can educate and inform with mercy and compassion, we have given a truly spiritual holiday gift of love that will keep on giving forever.
May your season be filled with genuine blessings of peace.
