Depending on where you are along your grief journey you will most likely notice yourself thinking more and thus missing your deceased loved one during the holidays. It is also natural for us to reflect on those we’ve lost, even if it has been years or decades since their death. Here are some things to expect if you’ve suffered a more recent loss:
1. Increase in grief and loss symptoms: No, you aren’t going crazy, you are grieving. It is likely (and normal) to experience an influx of many different emotions, sometimes all at once. It is also normal for these emotions to seemingly arise out of nowhere or be surprising to you.
3. Grief is a process: Grief unfolds over time and has many layers. Holidays can often be an opening to the next layer of grief, whether it is the first holiday since your loss or if many years have passed.
Five Tools for Coping:
1. Engage in a ritual that honors your loved one: Make their favorite dessert, carry on a family tradition your loved one enjoyed, start a new family tradition or ritual.
2. Give a toast in your loved one’s honor or recognize their loss: This can be done as a family or privately. Some ideas include lighting a candle for them at the holiday event/meal, leaving an empty chair for them at the holiday meal, sharing family memories of the loved one, using wish paper to send a wish to your loved one.
4. Try to lean into trusting yourself: Again, grief is a process. It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the process or like you are “going crazy.” Try and trust yourself and your experience and remind yourself that you are grieving and that these symptoms are normal in grief.
5. Reach out to friends and family members who get it: Reach out to others who can sit with your emotion without feeling compelled to offer advice, who have felt supportive in the past, or who have experience with loss in their own lives. It’s okay to let them know that you are hurting or grieving, that you don’t need them to say or do anything, but just be in it with you.