Tag: #holidayseason

Give each other grace

Give grace

My heart is tired.

There are so many people in my life who are hurting, grieving, struggling. The world is upside down and cruel and confusing. My head spins all day long and now it’s entering my sleep time.

I’m doing my best to check in with all those people in my life who need to be heard, who need kind words, who need a little extra love right now. However, I realized today that I need to check in with myself too and that means I may have to check out on helping others for a bit and focus on me. I’ve been focusing so much on the hearts of others that I forgot that mine is just as achy and needs a little extra care too.

Yet how do I do that? I can’t just walk away from others. How do I find balance? That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? And I for real don’t have an answer.

Somehow I need to acknowledge my loss and my feelings. While other people have moved on, and I am stronger now than I was, I still miss Nikolai as much today as I did the day he died. The dreams don’t ever quit. The remembering is always there. I need others to also acknowledge my loss, even if they don’t understand where I’m at with it right now. Unlike physical pain, it’s very difficult for people to relate to emotional pain, and especially to talk about it. It’s hard.

I also don’t want my loss to be a central focus of my life, but it is a huge part of my life and I can’t ignore it. And especially in seasons like Christmas, my feelings are bouncing all over the place – like a pinball machine. I can’t help it. Someone is missing from my season. I don’t care whether this is your first holiday without someone you love or the 20th, it still hurts.

While I try to help others, I feel myself sinking in the muck. I’m biting back tears constantly, forgetting things, snapping at people and acting sometimes in a way that I often regret. I ask you to grant me some mercy. Overlook it. My emotional tank is so empty right now and many days I feel like I’m going to shatter like a glass ball falling off the Christmas tree.

I try not to talk to people about my feelings because I feel like either they don’t want to hear it, they have their own grief they are drowning in, or they don’t know how to handle it and it just becomes awkward for everyone. The few times I thought about starting a conversation, I held back because I just don’t want to bring a room down, you know what I mean? After all, it’s the most joyous season of the year, right?

All of this leads me to the same question… how do I balance reaching out and loving others while simultaneously taking care of me? I still don’t have any answers except that maybe we just extend each other some grace right now and know that we are all in a tough spot. Maybe we lavish love on each other through prayer and forgive someone when they don’t reach out when we think they should.

Hebrews 4:16 – Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Grief and the holidays

Grief during the holidays

Here we are… it’s the Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s holiday season. Again.

Last week I tried so hard to write a blog piece about all the things I am grateful for, a thankful post of sorts. As you can see, I didn’t do it. Let me rephrase that: I couldn’t do that. And not because I don’t have a million things to be thankful and grateful for, it just felt forced. This is our second holiday season without Beans. Throw in some COVID-19 lockdown and limited time with extended family and BOOM, you have a storm of emotions that I simply didn’t have control over.

Grief on a normal day is hard; however, grief during the holiday season is something else entirely. It’s wanting desperately to hang on to the memories and keep everything the exact same, while realizing that it won’t ever be the same. It’s experiencing crushing sadness in the midst of pure joy.

I don’t know if this will help you or not; however, here are a few things that I tell myself, not just through this holiday season, but throughout the year:

Let yourself feel. Last night my family watched “Elf” and if any of you know me, you know this is my absolute favorite movie of all time – like, I could watch it in July it’s that good. This movie brings me absolute pure joy. Last night, while my heart is bursting with joy, I started to cry during the end where they all have to “sing loudly for all to hear” to make the sleigh fly. I don’t know why, it just hit me in the feels. This is the feeling I’m talking about where I literally seem to float between joy and sudden sadness. And that’s OKAY! You have to allow yourself to feel the full range of emotions. The sounds, sights and smells of the holiday season may trigger feelings of sadness, loss, emptiness and anxiety. I read in an article a while back that “time doesn’t heal the pain associated with a loss; it’s what you do with that time that matters. Grief is the process by which you heal.” Rather than try to ignore the grief, we should embrace it.

Set boundaries for yourself. Last year we had plans to meet friends for drinks one evening. The whole day leading up to that singular event was excruciating. I knew I couldn’t do it. My heart hurt too much and I really just wanted to stay home and cry a little, snuggle with my husband and just feel. I tried to bury those feelings all day but in the middle of getting a car wash on our way to meet them, I looked at my husband and he just knew. He texted our friends and cancelled on the spot. This was a lesson for me to make sure that I’m setting boundaries for myself. You are not obligated to do anything, go anywhere or see anyone if you aren’t feeling it.

Honor your memories. Memories are the very thing that keep you solidly connected to those you have lost. It is so critical to continue to talk about your loved ones and cherish all the amazing memories you shared with them. It helps keep them alive so to speak. Christmas was always Nikolai’s favorite holiday and I love that even at 14 he would get up at 3 a.m. to see what Santa brought him and then go back to bed and lay awake anxiously for everyone else to get up. I love to picture his face on Christmas morning. I have a million memories of Nikolai at the holidays and my family will share them, talk about him, remember him and honor all of those memories.

Create new traditions. This one is tough for me as I’m not a lover of change. I thrive on tradition. However, over the course of time, new traditions just start to naturally emerge and someday I will be okay with that.

Ask for help. Last December I was in the absolute darkest of places, a black hole of sorts that I literally could not pull myself out of. I have a dear friend who literally said to me one day, “either you make an appointment with a therapist, or I’m making it for you.” We need these people in our lives. No one ever likes to ask for help. And this is one of the biggest hurdles we as humans must jump over if we are going to make change in this world. We need to admit that we can’t do everything ourselves. It’s okay to ask for help. People, by nature, want to help – it’s who we are. It doesn’t have to be a therapist, it could be a friend or family member. The point here is to reach out. Make the call. Ask for help.

This holiday season is no different than my every day, in that I will always choose joy while recognizing that I won’t always experience joy. I have much to be grateful and thankful for; however, I can also sit in the space of sadness once in a while and grieve my losses. We all feel broken sometimes. Just hold on, joy will always eventually shine through.