How are you holding up in this holiday season?
By “holding up,” I don’t mean appearing okay to those around you. I don’t mean soldiering through as though everything were normal. I never do enjoy pretending.
By “holding up,” I guess I mean – how’s your heart? How do you get yourself through the day?
In grief, we somehow survive each day as it comes, some days slightly lighter, some days monumentally heavier. Every day is a marathon, with bedtime often being the only thing to look forward to. When getting through the everyday is challenging, the addition of the holiday season just tips things over into nearly unbearable.
How are you surviving? Have you found ways to help yourself through?
Honestly, as I remember my first year, it was mostly a keep your head down, plow through, ignore as much as you can method of survival. I slept a lot. I disappeared into the snowy woods with the dog a lot. I spent a lot of time volunteering on farms, covering shifts for those who were off celebrating the holidays with their own families.
If the choices were to be alone and sad, or uncomfortable around other people, I always chose alone and sad. At least it was real. Click To TweetI hid out as much as I could, enjoying my own company – my own deep sadness – more than any interaction with others. If the choices were to be alone and sad, or uncomfortable around other people, I always chose alone and sad. At least it was real.
Please remember that whatever you choose to do in this holiday season, staying true to yourself is important. To the best of your ability, seek out those places that companion your sadness, and avoid those places that ask you to pretend you are something other than you are. Life is too short for that.
How about you? Have you found places (or practices) that companion your sadness? What tactics are you using to extricate yourself from events or places that won’t make room for your truth? Let us know in the comments. Not only do I like to hear from you, but others in the community can use your ideas!
I might like to work in senior centers to provide some of what you speak of. What say you?
I actually volunteer with my dog as a pet therapy team at the hospitals where both of my parents died in 2016. My mother was at a local hospice unit near my home and my dad was at a veteran’s hospital where he stayed for a year in the hospice unit. I still feel a strong connection to the nurses and also to the veterans at the VA. I’m not only giving back to those who need it, I’m helping my own heart and spirit to feel love that I miss so much from my mom and dad.
Grandma passed. Then my gf left me… again. Middle of summer. This time for good. I did some acid on the hill where I was supposed to build a home almost a decade ago. Before greed left the land clear-cut and barren. Before I gave up on my dream to grow my own food in a home made of earth. At the peak of this trip I saw my dead grandfather’s face turn to me from the painting “grace” and say “Just dig! Start it now or quit crying!” So every day that I can… I take a mattock and pull rock from clay. I shovel until I feel my heart will burst. I dig because it’s somewhere I can be alone and cry or scream. This is the true me. Covered in red mud and sweat. Tears and snot and spit and busted knuckles. The only way I have found to cope with wave after unending wave of intense sorrow and rage is to dig. To get away from everyone who wouldn’t come dig with me. People who are convinced I’m a mad-man. I dig on nights when my thoughts turn to suicide and I’ll probably dig on Christmas because… well.