Pamela is an Internationally Certified Yoga Therapist and Holistic Health Life-Balance Coach. Having emerged thriving in her own healing journey as a widow who overcame PTSD and late-stage Lyme disease, Pamela's passion and mission is to guide others to embody their wholeness physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically and spiritually.
In this inspiring article, you will learn how to cope with grief and loss during the holidays. Whether you find yourself reading this after losing a spouse, losing a family member or losing a loved one, the words on this page will light the way back to your light again. You will not only take away guidance for transforming the holiday blues into an array of hues, you will learn how to deal with grief in healthy ways.
We have all heard of the holiday blues, but grief is far more complex than that. What about all the other complicated colors we feel? Red for instance. We are angry they are no longer here to enjoy the holidays with us and angry that we can no longer enjoy the holidays like we used to. Then there is the green, those fond now bittersweet memories of joyful holidays past with our loved ones before they died. The blues are as dark as the winter night sky. The pain of loss is compounded by all the jolly memories, the joy abounding in others not experiencing the isolating feelings of loss we feel, and the seasonal depression brought on by shivering nights and rainy days.
Our grief is much more than just the holiday blues.
A family Christmas tree adorned in love has many colors compared to the monochromatic store model. The tree may start off polished looking then begin to turn all sorts of colors with the addition of family ornaments, the ones the kids make and the friends give as gifts. Some ornaments get weathered, broken, and lost. Those of us who bear grief have lives turned colorful with love, an expression of a life well lived. Grief and loss are inevitable for a person who loves.
Please know that you are not alone. Many of us silently bear grief during this season.
It may feel as though your light went out when your loved one passed, but I promise you that it has not. Grief’s light is like a candlelight vigil not the winner of the tacky lights tour. Here are some ways that you can find your light, your genuine smile, while simultaneously feeling your grief unapologetically, coping with grief in a healthy way.
There is no right or wrong way to go about a holiday season and your grief. The most important practice you must do for yourself is to listen to your mind-body needs and honor them, honor your personal grief process and the time and space that it needs.
As the holidays approach, the first thing we need to do for ourselves is to be gentler, more compassionate with ourselves by giving ourselves the time and space to safely grieve, to cry our eyes out when we need to. Especially in early grief, you may need to take entire grief days off from life.
Be discerning about whom you allow to be in your presence during these sensitive times.
Christmas was just ten days after my husband passed. On that first Christmas, I pushed myself to go to a friend’s Christmas party. I told myself it was what he would want me to do because we would have gone together. I told myself that friends needed me to be okay. I told myself the only other alternative was to sit in darkness at home alone weeping. I told myself a lot of things that just were not true because I was not being compassionate with or attentive to myself.
Allowing ourselves to feel grief and loss in an emotionally safe space is self-compassionate and what our loved one would want for us.
For some, frequent alone time in short durations may be the only space that feels safe for this. For others, inviting over a certain friend or family member who is equipped and capable of holding this space for us can be therapeutic. As thoughts, feelings, and tears come, we should allow them to, for as long as it feels safe to. We can edit our thoughts that contain “I should”, replacing them with “I could ___ or I could ___” and notice how our body feels about the options we present to it. This is the act of listening to and being attentive to our own needs. Choosing what feels better for us is self-compassion.
Before attending a holiday meal or gathering with family or friends, give yourself time to prepare. Give yourself time to sit with all of your emotions and embrace all of your colors, including the darker ones, the reds, and the black-as-night blues.
Grief requires us to give ourselves the time and space we need to reflect and feel all of our colorful emotions, so that we may make peace with them coexisting in our lives. This is especially important during the holidays, when feelings of obligation and the temptation to overcommit ourselves runs high.
On the third Christmas after my husband passed, I felt ready to participate in my family’s traditional dinner. By participate, I told myself that I should make a dish to contribute and to make good use of the kitchen in my new home. I had heard that cooking is therapeutic. Had I given myself a less restrictive, more spacious opportunity to cook in my new kitchen, I believe that this would have been the case. However, I decided to cook a dish in my oven for the first time in my new home the day of the gathering, and I had to drive over an hour to get there in time for our 5 pm dinner. I did not decide this until the day of, and I had yet to grocery shop. This holiday stress compounded the grief I was feeling. I hurriedly placed the ingredients into a baking dish and into the oven only to hear it explode a few minutes later. I also exploded, into tears.
Allow yourself to find some things to be happy and grateful for.
In addition to the time and space that we need to feel grief, we need to give ourselves time to reflect on what and whom we love who is present with us in life today and allow ourselves to feel the good feelings that life has to offer us in the here and now. Gratitude has been a guru to my grief, not a savior, but a friendly guide to grief that has helped me find my joy of living again.
Take time to reconnect with yourself, your life dreams, and your soul’s purpose. Cherish the dreams that have already come true, even the bittersweet ones we had to accept came to an end. With acceptance and gratitude, we can open our hearts again to live our lives with the fullness of a life well lived. It is what they would want for us.
For some, like myself, this may also involve reconnecting with your loved one in spirit. My late husband, who was never the late one by the way, was very supportive of my purposeful life dreams. Soulmates take on many other roles in our lives besides husbands and wives. His role now in my life is different and yet the same; he still supports my soul and its purpose. Exploring ways to connect with him in spirit through nature and music, things he also had a passion for, and through my own passion for writing has transformed what initially felt like soul loss into a profoundly strengthened and clearer vision of my soul’s purpose.
For some, there may be grief over losing yourself. Our souls can never be lost; we cannot lose ourselves, just our feeling of connection. Taking the time to engage in practices and activities in surroundings that facilitate connection is key to finding our light again and transforming our pain into the wind beneath our wings of rekindled purpose.
Create new memories that honor your love, giving it the greatest gift of all, the freedom to change form.
Of course, we must accept that loss that has occurred. I will never get to feel again the way my husband’s hand physically felt holding mine and the real and present feelings of safety and security that gave to me. I can no longer experience the joy of seeing him smile and his eyes twinkle with life and adventure. I miss him, all that was him, not just the way he made me feel. I will always miss him. Rather than prolonging suffering from losing a spouse, I have accepted that he has changed form. Feelings are really just sensing, and I now sense him in different ways. I have come to discover that I can still feel the safety and security and the joy too, because that was always from God’s presence in our lives. On a deeper level than before, I have come to know the souls of my loved ones are ever-present with me in spirit.
My husband, Joey, loved to play in the snow with our pups, with our friends, any chance he got to do so. He insisted on watching Christmas Vacation every year and making that a family tradition, and we also had a yearly Outer Banks beach trip tradition with his friends. For some of us, honoring our loved one’s traditions can feel good, yet for others it can feel too painful. Making new traditions in the same spirit is also just as honoring. One Christmas I honored him by watching Christmas Vacation again. Another holiday season when it snowed, I honored his joy and love for fun by making new memories in the snow with friends. Some years I have continued the beach trip tradition, yet I also have lived my own life which led me to move across the country to California. When I have not been in the outer banks for that tradition, I have been at a reggae festival in California. Joey loved reggae, really loved reggae. I can feel his presence there and his smiling just as strongly. No matter what I do, his legacy lives on through me.
Navigating grief has included a lot of sadness, yet it also has given me the ability to feel joy on a deeper, enduring level. In early grief, I thought life was unbearable. Joey had asked me to please live each day to the max, yet I could not even stop crying for a day. For years I felt like a failure who wanted more than anything to embody his joy for living and love of life, yet this seemed impossible to me. I know the meaning of “All things are possible with God” personally now because I turned my pain into empowerment by creating connection in the spirit of love and joy that is the legacy of my loved one.
No matter where you are right now in your grief, please know there is always hope. Never stop hoping for the impossible. You may meet love again in a way, shape, and form that you never imagined was possible.
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Pamela Domzalski, CIAYT Holistic Therapist Life Coach
Pamela Domzalski, Internationally Certified Yoga Therapist and Holistic Health Life-Balance Coach, is a mentor for living your fullest, “full lotus” life in health, happiness, peace and prosperity. She is Founder of a global business, Thriving Lotus LLC. Thriving Lotus provides depth and breadth of expertise in alternative therapies and life coaching in order to address the root causes of imbalances with the holistic, customized approach each unique client needs.
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