Grief made me dread holidays and other celebrations. Am I normal?

Grief affects so many things. What’s happened to your ability to enjoy holidays and other celebrations? Are you normal if you can’t stand them anymore?

Dreading holidays and other celebrations is #perfectlynormal in grief.

Loss is every day. No mark on the calendar makes it different. Being flooded with images of what was, what might have been, what should have come to pass – that’s what makes it harder. Sometimes the long retail and social lead-up to various holidays, with reminders everywhere you look, feels worse than the day itself. Whether there’s a particular holiday, date, or time of year that hurts the most or if all festive occasions suck equally, you aren’t the only one who finds yourself dreading them and already feeling into how they make your grief even harder to carry.

How about you? Are there particular holidays or dates that you find yourself dreading? The more we talk about this stuff, the more we tell the truth about what grief is really like, the more people realize they’re not alone.

Grief is hard. It impacts every aspect of life, big and small. There are so many things grieving people experience, things they do or don’t do, that they (or the outside world) might think are unusual or weird, but are actually perfectly normal. You aren’t weird. You’re grieving.

The problem is, people often don’t realize they’re normal until they discover they aren’t alone in feeling a certain way or doing a particular thing. And feeling alone makes grief even harder than it already is.

Because it’s such a relief to find out we’re not alone, we’re creating a series of posts acknowledging as many of those things as we can, one #perfectlynormal thing at a time.

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These posts were created using personal contributions people just like you and from our awesome Grief Revolution patrons. My patrons get to see everything we create before anyone else, suggest topics to cover in future projects, participate in live Q&A sessions, and more. Join the Grief Revolution at patreon.com/megandevine/