A Therapist Shares 3 Ways To Grieve During The Holidays, When Everyone Expects Happiness
When someone dies around the holidays, it can be hard to know what to do next.
Benevolente82 via Shutterstock Today is the anniversary of my mother’s passing. It's difficult to move, speak, and make my morning coffee. It occurs to me that I’m grieving. As if I don’t have enough going on. I have to get it together. Others are counting on me. Grief during the holidays has nowhere to go.
I keep telling myself I don’t have time for being sad. After all, it's the holidays, there's so much to do. But my sadness, like a mist, surrounds me. Grief, after all, appears to change the brain.
As I push through to accomplish my Very Important Goals, my memories are whispering, calling to me, saying, "You need to be still, be sad, and cry." Despite my most strenuous efforts, I can’t seem to shake off this ache.
My grief is there waiting for me, bringing back my last moments with my mother in the nursing home, remembering how proudly she said her last words before she lapsed into days of silence. I'm with her in all the fullness of sadness and love — and I'm in my life. I’m present to the memories of the past, both happy and sad ones, as I try to focus on what lies before me today.
A therapist's three ways to grieve during the holidays, when everyone expects happiness:
1. Reaffirm a new way of honoring your lost loved one
My mother taught me to fight and not give in. I remember this and smile. I recommit to my work of which she was so proud of, and can now focus.
2. Share your pain
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A member of a weekly support group I attend shares the first anniversary of attending her father’s wake. I take this as a sign. I share, "Today is the anniversary of my mother’s passing. I, too, am grieving."
We sigh together. Two other members share that they are also marking the anniversary of a parent’s passing. Another member shares that she is about to lose her mother-in-law.
In this Zoom group where we don’t know each other’s last names, over half of us are grieving during this holiday season. Speaking about it helps.
3. Spread joy
My young grandchildren live in Los Angeles. I live in rural New York; the physical distance between us is too far. This is another level of my ongoing sadness, intensifying today’s grief during the holidays.
I consider what I can do and make a plan to go to a toy store. I encourage myself to not only think of what I’d like to give my grandchildren but to focus on the other children in my life, children who are closer.
These are the adolescents in the long-term alcohol and drug rehabilitation center where I consult, teens who, along with addiction, often have long-standing issues of child abuse, which they've been self-medicating. One has been smoking meth with her father, and another has been shooting up since her mother taught her how. Both have been using drugs since grade school. And there are others.
I decided to buy gifts for those who I know will be in rehab over Christmas. Knowing that I can help touch the vulnerable child in them brings me joy and hope, which I need.
Acknowledging our sorrow and taking simple, concrete steps to bring support and joy into our lives can help us heal our grief during the holidays.
Patricia O’Gorman, Ph.D., psychologist and life coach, is a best-selling author of nine books on trauma, resilience, women, and self-parenting. Find her work on Substack.
