The stores are announcing their sales and the countdown begins. If this is the first holiday season that you must navigate since your loved one has died it can be overwhelming. How do you get through the holidays?

Try to identify what will HELP you through this holiday. Thanksgiving and Christmas are usually filled with traditions. Traditional activities give us a sense of family and comfort – usually. What are the “traditions” that you have “always” done? As the list forms, do you begin to feel tired and overwhelmed? That is a key sign that you do not need to do all those activities – this year. If you are the one who usually has the family over for Christmas Eve dinner, allow someone else to do it this year. You may need to have the option to go to the dinner but leave early if you need to do so. If you usually drive 8-10 hours or fly to “Mom’s house”, maybe this year is a good opportunity to start a new tradition in your own home. I suspect “Mom” or whoever will understand. (And if they don’t, they aren’t the priority this year.)
My son died in September. The holidays that year were very difficult. I wanted to just stay home and cancel any celebrations! It was a very quiet holiday and that was helpful to me. I did make myself go to Christmas Eve service and I am glad that I did. I took extra tissues and sat toward the back of the church. I don’t apologize or feel embarrassed by the tears that I shed that night. As I listened to the message, I began to identify that Jesus’ mother, Mary, probably shed more than a few tears herself.

Communicate to your family what will help and what will not. I think this is hard. I want people who love me to be able to read my mind. The truth is – they are all busy with their own lives and their own troubles and they don’t read minds! I am a better writer than spokesperson so I wrote emails and cards to those who needed to know why I wasn’t coming to events. I told them I was going to take care of myself this holiday and do things that helped me. I hoped to re-engage in some events again the next year. I received several notes back of understanding and also a couple of “thank you’s” that I made good sense that they were going to follow for themselves.

Take time to allow the pain to surface. I think this may be the primary reason most of us do not slow down during the holidays when we are grieving the loss of someone we love or a job loss or whatever loss. If we keep ourselves busy, we do not have to feel. The wound has a thin layer of healing over it and the pain is still very fresh and sharp. The thought of allowing another wave of pain to surface and roll over that wound seems – crazy! But hear me well from both my personal journey and my observation of 30+ years as a healthcare professional, if I do not allow the pain of grief to surface, it will eat me alive like a caustic acid in my physical body and in my spirit.

I hope you have someone that you can share this time of grief. Certainly if you are married, you share your feelings and offer comfort to each other. Sometimes it is a great help to have a friend who has some “distance” from this pain who can listen and is not living in this valley with you. I hope you also have a friend like I do, Jesus Christ. He will allow me to talk as much as I need and doesn’t mind if I revisit things that we have discussed before. He is okay if I cry and His words are perfect in comfort and healing.

I will send a free copy of my book, Grief: Finding the Candle of Light, to the first three people who leave comments on this blogpost. I hope you begin 2012 carry less weight in your “grief bag”.