Dealing with grief during the holidays can be hard as you navigate gatherings and changes to holiday traditions. Many people who are grieving find that this time of year can be particularly challenging. But from attending a grief support group to opting out of the holidays altogether, there are many things you can do to support yourself through the holiday season.
Grief Is Hard During Any Season
Grief can be challenging to experience no matter the time of year. The grieving process can impact your emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual health.3 Living life after a loss can feel impossibly painful. Many people experience grieving as a process that ebbs and flows with some days (or even minutes) feeling harder than others.
Outside of the holiday season, grief can be hard to experience throughout the year.4 In addition to the unique and natural ebbs and flows of each person’s grieving process, many people experience a more intense feeling of grief at other times of the year around significant dates. These include anniversaries, birthdays, and major events such as a graduation or wedding.
How the Holidays Exacerbate Feelings of Grief & Loss
The holiday season is often portrayed as being full of good cheer, hopefulness, and connection. When you are grieving, the sense of discord between your experience of your grief and the vibes of the holiday season can exacerbate your feelings of grief and loss.
Your feelings of grief and loss may also be exacerbated by either (or both) spending time with others who are also grieving, or feeling that everyone but you is celebrating. The holiday season often includes more gatherings. If you are spending more time with friends and family who are grieving the same loss, you may feel your own grief more intensely or notice that you are holding your grief as well as theirs. Conversely, spending time with people who aren’t grieving and are in full holiday mode may make you feel more isolated, exacerbating your grief.
15 Tips for Dealing With Grief During the Holidays
While grief can be particularly difficult to bear during the holidays, there are things you can do to support yourself. Remember that what works for you may be different than what works for other people who are grieving the same loss. And what works for you might shift and change over time. Check in often with yourself about what is and isn’t working. This list is just a starting place—tap into your own intuition about what will help you, and give yourself the space and time to do what works best for you.
Here are 15 tips that may help you dealing with grief during the holidays:
1. Feel Your Feelings
As best as you can, allow yourself to feel your feelings as they come up. Grief often brings up varied and sometimes conflicting feelings. In one moment you may feel inexpressibly sad and in another full of holiday cheer. All of your feelings are valid, and there is space for all of them. Give yourself permission to feel your feelings in the moment without judgement.
It is especially important to allow yourself to feel any of the challenging emotions that come up such as sadness, rage, or disappointment. Feelings that go unacknowledged and unexpressed often build up. The stress of the holiday season may exacerbate this until those feelings finally explode. Try to give yourself the space and time to acknowledge and express whatever feelings are coming up for you as they come up.
2. Talk to a Therapist
Grief can sometimes trigger or exacerbate mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.2 Many people also experience more challenges to their mental health during the colder, darker months of the winter (and holiday) season.
Talking with a therapist can help you identify and address any mental health concerns. A therapist can also provide you with a safe, non-judgemental space to process your grief. In addition to offering you tools and perspectives that are tailored for your experience, therapists who are trained in working with grief can support you as you grieve.
3. Take Care of Your Body
Grief is often a very physical experience.3 It can affect everything from your sleep to how, what, and when you eat. As much as you can, take care of your physical body. Get enough sleep and make time for naps if you need them. Eat nourishing food and drink plenty of water. Exercise as you have the energy and spend some time outdoors during the day. The mind-body connection is powerful, and taking care of your physical self can help you as you grieve.
4. Ask for Help & Support
The holiday season often adds additional tasks to people’s to-do lists that can overwhelm in the best of times. When you’re grieving, holiday tasks such as shopping for presents or decorating may simply feel like too much. If the task is one that is important to you but that you don’t have the energy to complete, ask a friend or family member for help.
On top of completing the task, asking for help also gives people who want to support you a clear way to show up for you. People are often unsure how to be helpful and supportive when someone they care about is grieving. Asking for what you need, whether it be help with wrapping gifts or someone to talk to about what you’re feeling, helps you get what you need and helps those who care about you support you in positive ways.
5. Volunteer
Helping others often makes us feel better. Consider volunteering for a cause you support, or volunteer in support of a cause that was important to the person who has died. Many community centers and religious organizations have volunteer opportunities unique to the holiday season such as serving holiday meals at soup kitchens and wrapping donated gifts for families experiencing difficult times.
6. Start New Traditions Instead of Replicating Old Ones
Change up what the holidays look like. Sometimes trying to replicate past holidays can feel awkward, strange, or deeply sad in the wake of a loss. This may be particularly true of certain traditions if the person who has died played a key role, such as always carving the turkey or putting up holiday lights. Consider changing things up if the idea of carrying on traditions without your loved one doesn’t feel right. Brainstorm with other family members or friends who usually participate in your celebrations how you might change things up in a way that feels better.
7. Attend a Support Group
Many people find the holiday season to be a more challenging time when they are grieving. Local community centers and religious organizations often offer grief support groups. Connecting with others who are grieving can help provide a sense of understanding and mutual support.
In addition to local support groups that meet in person, there are also online support groups. If you are looking to connect with other people who have experienced a loss similar to yours, sites such as grieving.com and onlinegriefsupport.com offer groups for those grieving specific types of losses (e.g. loss of a spouse, loss of a loved one to cancer).
8. Communicate Clearly With Others About Expectations
A loss often affects more than just one person, and each person has their own unique experience of their grief. It’s important to communicate clearly with others around the expectations for the holiday season. You might consider having a family meeting where everyone can voice their needs, wants, and preferences.
Remember that everyone’s grieving process is unique to them, and what you each want and need during this time may look different. Creating an open and ongoing dialogue can help everyone navigate the holiday season and honor each person’s capacity for how, when, and in what ways they participate.
9. Talk With Your Children
It’s important to remember to talk to your children about grief and loss in ways that are developmentally appropriate. Let them know that they might find that this holiday season feels a little (or a lot) different, and that they might feel all kinds of emotions.
Validate for them that whatever they feel is okay, and encourage them to express and communicate their feelings as they’re ready. Do your best to model this for them as well. If you are able to acknowledge and communicate your feelings, children will feel safer in doing the same. This will help them feel heard and supported in their grief.
10. Include Your Children in Planning
Allow your children to voice their wants and needs for what the holiday season will look like. If they feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed at the idea of participating in certain holiday traditions (e.g. a family church service, a neighborhood holiday gathering), consider allowing them to pass. Work with them to find ways they can be involved in the holiday season that honor their wants and needs.
Ask children of all ages for their input on how you can honor and remember the person who has passed during the holiday season. Children aren’t always aware of the conversations going on around the person who has died and adults’ grief, and it can appear to them that no one is remembering or grieving their loss.5 Setting aside time and creating rituals around rememberance can reassure them that their loss and grief are real and valid.
11. Opt Out of the Holidays
If the idea of celebrating anything feels too overwhelming, consider opting out of holiday celebrations. Take a trip, have a movie marathon, or spend the day immersed in a favorite hobby. It’s okay not to feel like celebrating. Honor your capacity and allow yourself the flexibility to do what feels best for you. Be sure to clearly communicate your plans with others who may be affected so that everyone is on the same page.
12. Socialize as You Feel Able
The holiday season is often full of gatherings and parties. It might feel really good to go to a big party with lots of people you know and love, and it might also feel too overwhelming or exhausting. If you receive an invitation to a gathering, reach out to the host and ask if it’s okay if you accept or decline last minute. Check in with yourself as it gets closer and do what feels best that day.
Consider bringing a friend or family member who can help you navigate the gathering if going on your own feels like too much. Once you’ve arrived, don’t feel like you have to stay the whole time. Give yourself the flexibility to leave whenever you are ready to go.
13. Make a Plan A & Plan B
Experiencing the ebbs and flows of grief often requires a different kind of flexibility. Making plans can feel difficult because it’s hard to predict how you’ll feel that day. And sometimes, if you’ve made a plan but it doesn’t feel quite right on the day of, it’s hard to honor your capacity if you’re not sure what else to do. Making a Plan A and Plan B can help you better honor your capacity and allow the ebbs and flows of grief to be experienced more freely.
For example, Plan A might include attending a holiday gathering with friends. Plan B might include inviting one friend over that evening to watch a movie or share a meal instead. On the day of, if you don’t feel up to the gathering, you have another plan in place you can enjoy instead. Sometimes just having a backup plan makes it easier to follow through on Plan A, and say no if it’s not right that day.
14. Be Aware of Your Alcohol Intake
The holiday season often involves more festive gatherings than at other times of the year, with a correlated increase in alcohol consumption.1 The consumption of alcohol is a common way people try to self-medicate or modify their emotional state. When you’re grieving, the intensity of your feelings may make alcohol feel like a particularly welcome escape, and the frequent abundance of it during the holidays may make it easier to indulge.
If you choose to drink, be mindful of how much and how often you’re drinking. Check in with yourself to see what’s driving the decision to have a drink. If it’s driven by a desire to numb or check-out, say no to the drink and reach out for other supports (e.g. talking to a friend, getting some exercise, taking a nap).
15. Honor Your Loved One
The physical absence of your loved one doesn’t mean that they are absent from your mind or heart. Setting aside time to remember them can be an important part of acknowledging and honoring the life they lived, their importance in your life, and the loss you’ve experienced.
Honoring your loved one may be as simple as reminiscing about them or may involve carving out a special time and space to honor them in a more ritualized way. Check in with those who have also experienced the loss of your loved one about how they’d like to honor them during the holidays. Be sure to include children and ask for their ideas as well.
Below is a list of 13 ideas for how to honor loved ones who have passed:
- Set a place for them at the table
- Light a candle for them
- Say a prayer for them
- Set aside time to reminisce and share memories with family and friends
- Create a holiday scrapbook of pictures or other mementos from past holidays
- Make memorial ornaments or wreaths
- Make a favorite recipe of theirs
- Visit their gravesite or place of rest
- Watch a holiday movie or TV show they loved
- Make a toast during a holiday meal in remembrance of your loved one
- Make a donation in their memory to a cause that was important to them
- Set up a memory table and place pictures, mementos, and/or notes to your loved one
- Hang a stocking in memory of your loved one, and invite friends and family members to put notes to them inside
There are many other ways you can remember and honor your loved one during the holiday season. Be creative and check in with yourself about what feels right. It can be helpful to communicate plans for remembering your loved one with other family members and friends who are grieving the loss as well.
Additional Resources for Grief During the Holidays
For more information and support on navigating grief and loss, the following books and websites may be helpful:
- It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine
- The Grief Recovery Handbook by John James and Russell Friedman
- The Cure for Sorrow by Jan Richardson
- Grief Support Resources – OUR HOUSE Grief Pages
- Grief.com – Group Resources
- efuge in Grief: Grief Support That Doesn’t Suck – Megan Devine
- Helpful Websites for Grieving | The Center for Grief Recovery
