"I'm grieving at Christmas and I don't know how to be happy. What should I do?"
First of all let me extend a huge, compassionate, consensual hug to you because grief at any time of the year is really challenging to navigate, and grief at Christmas - when everything is about light and laughter and feeling good and feeling happy - can be extremely challenging.
So let's talk a little bit about grief to start with, and what grief might look like. Your grief might be grieving for someone who's passed: perhaps a parent, a relative or even a young child. It could also be grief for a relationship - perhaps a divorce has happened recently or a separation, where you are now having Christmas in a very different way, without the person that you used to love or used to care for. Grief can also be for missed opportunities, for things that didn't happen. That could be a redundancy, a loss of money or opportunity in general.
So grieving is an emotional process that we go through not just when someone passes away but when some element of our life as we know it has gone forever. That can include aspects within yourself - perhaps the ending of a behaviour, or an identity, or someone you used to be that only you are privy too. We go through this process of grieving - and it is a process, it's ups and downs and there are some times during the grieving process where actually we feel quite normal and everything seems quite fine and getting on with it day-to-day … and there are other times where it hits you like a brick wall. I know from my experience when I was younger, for example, in my granddad passing away, I remember not feeling anything at all until sitting in some random geography class and the sense of grief and loss simply exploded all of a sudden. I broke down then, and that was with a grandparent. If it's your grandparent, or parent or child, your grief will look and feel very different.
But during this time of year, where we tend to think of Christmas as very happy and joyful, it can be difficult to be someone who is grieving, because the emotions that you are feeling might seem very disconnected to the season. Perhaps there's even pressure that you might be putting on yourself to be happy or to be love and light and laughter - to put on a good face for everyone else. If you're feeling that “I'm grieving at Christmas, I don't know how to be happy and what should I do about it?”, I invite you to consider who expects you to be happy at Christmas, and why.
Perhaps it's something like you’re grieving for a parent who passed away, and you don't want your children to be sad at Christmas, so you want to put on a brave face for them. Or perhaps you’re grieving a relationship that's ended, so you’re spending time with your immediate family rather than the one you created with your ex. You want to show your family that you're happy to be there, and perhaps avoid any awkward conversations about the situation, but inside actually this time of year is really hard and very upsetting.
I invite you to consider that the pressure comes not from the grief itself, but from the idea that we cannot show other people we are grieving; that we need to be happy, we need to lie and be joyful because that's what is expected of us for this season - apparently. You might even have people around you who aren’t very good at dealing with grief and sadness, and so they say things like “Cheer up” - which is, of course, well meaning but deeply unhelpful and even irritating. Right now you are grieving, and overlaid on this grief is a pressure that you don’t ‘know’ how to be happy but you really ‘should’ at this time of year - but I invite you to gently question that perceived need.
Whether you look at the pagan origins of the Winter Solstice or whether you think about the Christian interpretation of this time of year, most sacred celebrations during winter or cold months are about bringing light into a dark period (either literally through candles and feasting or metaphorically through the birth of a saviour). Instinctively, we recognize that this time of year is a time of darkness, contemplation and sometimes deep sadness for what is currently dormant or missing from our abundant world.
So for you to feel grief during this time is not alien or out of kilter with what the organic world of creation is doing. We, as humans, have created celebrations to bring light and laughter into this time so we don't continue to always feel that grief and sadness - but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't feel it, or that there isn't sometimes a melancholy during this season, a sense that someone or something is absent or dormant. I encourage you to gently question the need to be happy and ‘jolly’ all the time during this season and lean toward recognising its completely acceptable and meaningful and important for you to feel sadness and grief as part of your process of healing. Trees are not trying desperately to blossom during December, so why should you?
I think about this acceptance of sadness in the context of a very personal example. My partner lost his brother when he was quite young; they were both teenagers and his brother passed away just a couple of days before Christmas. Every year since then my partner’s Christmas has been imbued with an air of sadness and grief - you can't escape that. He hasn't always been in an environment with his family where that's recognized, but it's an undertone, and so it's really important for us at this time of year that we acknowledge there is sadness here. Something deeply sad happened and that will always be true - and at the same time, right now, all these beautiful, lovely and joyful things are happening.
I really invite you to do the same if you are grieving at Christmas. Because when you feel into the sadness and the grief, you will also allow yourself to feel fully into the joy and the love that was present in the person who has passed, or the opportunity that has passed. You can appreciate the joy and the happiness that person or experience brought you while it was here - but you can only really do that fully if you can also recognize what's gone. Feeling it all doesn't mean you have to be sad all the time, but it also doesn't mean that you have to be happy all the time. You can feel it all and therefore benefit from it all:
“You know, I really miss my mum at this time of year - she had such a good laugh and she loved Christmas crackers, she really loved them. I’d like to get some funny ones this year, so when we pull them - I want to think of her, read those jokes … Maybe I’ll shed a few tears because I miss her, but I’ll also laugh at those terrible jokes because that’s what she did.”
This process is about allowing both of the emotions - in fact, your whole range of emotions - to be present at any one time. Because that's who you are! Human beings are not designed to be monochrome or monophonic in our emotions. We're designed to be technicolour - to express a whole range of emotion, and sometimes that means laughing so much we cry … or crying so much that we start giggling!
So if you are grieving right now at Christmas, and you're feeling this sense of pressure or ‘should’-ness around being happy, I invite you to question the necessity of being happy and to ask yourself questions like these:
“Actually, would it be okay if I was sad and happy?”
“Would it be okay if I was grieving and joyful?”
“What would it show the people around me if I fully accepted all of my emotions? If I allowed them to flow through me?”
“Could accepting and expressing the full technicolour range of my emotions give permission to others to do the same?”
“What would that be like, for us all to feel whatever we needed to feel?”
Because remember: there will be others who are feeling exactly the same way as you - grieving the people that they've lost - but feeling unable to express it. Perhaps this is the year you show them that you're allowed to feel all of your feelings, whether it's Christmas Day Boxing Day or just another Wednesday.
You’ve probably realised from reading this post that putting this stuff into practice isn’t easy, especially during the hustle and bustle of this time of year. You need to be consistent with it, and that means doing it every single day. If you’d like helpful daily reminders that encourage you to put these ideas into action, then click on the link below and join my affordable metaphysical membership, Soul Messages. As a member, you receive a daily text message to keep you on your path, from practical exercises and journal prompts, to musical suggestions and uplifting notes of appreciation. Click on the link below to join the Soul Messages membership, and I’ll see you there.
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