Grief Does NOT take Holidays
Musings from Catherine Whelan Costen
It’s that time of year again! Holiday season comes several times a year, but the Christmas events are clearly the loudest in Western culture and so we really notice the loud, the bold, along with the extremes of expressed emotion. Even if we do not celebrate Christmas in a religious way, there is no avoiding it.
Lights, decorations, hectic shoppers and festive music on the radio in shopping centers and in our workplaces surround us. This is all meant to hype us up into a holiday mood, to shop, to spend money and to let go of our worries, but grief doesn’t take a holiday.
The difficulty in our grief can often be linked to the meaning we gave the event we perceived as loss. Society contributes to this, but so do our individual life experiences, beliefs and filters that we judge life on. Did losing our job mean we were bad, incompetent, or perhaps the boss just mean? Or did it mean we were in the wrong job and another better opportunity is around the corner? The story we tell ourselves really influences our perception of pain and grief, along with our ability to allow it to move through us.
I’ve written about this many times because I know grief intimately. The first Christmas after my father died, all my mother did was cry. She did that for a couple of years actually. Being a widow with five children, under twelve years of age, was certainly not in her plan. I was ten years old that second year and my world was forever changed. My perception of the world was that all good families had fathers and I did not. (I’ve gone in to the fall out of these beliefs in my next book, so won’t belabor the points here.)
After my brother died, it was less tragic, less emotional for me and I learned to accept that for me, life would be full of loss, grief, tragedy and that was just how it was. Some people didn’t seem to have those kinds of tragedies, but we did. The world kept turning even though I was swallowing grief year after year.
The year my son was killed in a vehicle accident, I put up the tree and pretended my holiday cheer. The second year, I didn’t put up a tree. I didn’t pretend. I just let myself be in my grief exactly as it was. I cried when I wanted to, socialize when it felt right to me, not because I had to do it. I let go of duty and obligation.
By 2016, the year my mother died, I had buried a father, brother, step-father, went through divorce and single motherhood, lost my childhood, lost jobs, lost dreams, lost my physical health and visions of what life could be on planet earth.
One thing is consistent however and that is the will to thrive, beyond surviving. I did not want to be a survivor; that label meant you had to have some drama to get over. I had a lifetime of getting over and through near death, death, loss after loss and I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted to thrive and I didn’t know how.
Through my healing work I’ve come to notice the joy is in the moment, not in the big or small events. The sorrow will come because we have attached to people, ideas, and dreams of how it should be. Sorrow and joy are both feelings and when I shut down my sorrow, I also shut down my joy. Merely surviving is a reactionary way to live, rather than a responsive path, which leads to thriving.
So although grief never takes a holiday, it is a process that unfolds moment by moment, I found I could experience joy even in my grief. I often was reprimanded for laughing when the world wanted me to be serious. So I learned not to laugh, but also not to cry and not to show my anger, or disappointment.
I cannot make the world stop and sit in grief with me, nor would I really want it to. The year my father died, I am sure that other people experienced the birth of a new baby in their family. Would it be right for them to sit in grief with me rather than experience their own joy? Was it wrong for me to laugh and play even though my father was dead? No it wasn’t wrong, it was completely natural.
Life is filled with ups and downs, highs and lows and individually we experience them. We each have to feel our feelings. Nobody else can heal my grief, or enjoy my joy for me. It’s really not that different from watching someone else eat a chocolate cake and either expecting to taste it by watching or have an allergic reaction to it; it’s an individual moment. Honoring my own feelings is the only way to move that energy.
I have learned to allow my sorrow to come up, to feel it and to let it go. When I see a happy child at Christmas time I can remember my son in his joyful moments, even as they bring up the sorrow of his not being here physically. If we ask people to suppress their joy in favor of our grief, they won’t have the joyful memories to carry them through their own grief when it comes. It always comes. It is the joyful memories that we allowed to be fully experienced, that fill our reserves to feed us through the grief.
Not everyone will have a lifetime filled with sorrow, or as many tragedies as I had, they will have their own, sometimes much more than I experienced. Grief taught me a great deal about life. The more I suppressed it, the harder it was to carry and eventually my body shut down and I got sick. If I happen to feel like having a pity party, I won’t go to a joyful celebration and sit in a corner sulking, I stay home. But alternatively I can respect my sorrowful feelings and go to the party and participate joyfully. It’s always a choice. Energy has to move; grief is energy and so is joy. Suppress neither and let life carry you.
When I decorate my tree I allow all the joyful memories to flood over me, when I hear songs on the radio that remind me of happier times, I let those happy memories in, even when they bring tears to my eyes. The tears cleanse and help me heal the wounds in my heart. I talk about my loved ones on the other side of the veil, in both joy and sorrow. When someone wishes me a Merry Christmas, or says Happy Holidays to me, I do not reject the blessing. I do not ask them to come in to my grief; I open my heart and let their joyful blessing feed me.
Holidays, holy days, community celebrations come and go, but our grief is very individual and so is our joy. It’s up to us to ride our emotions without guilt, without anger at the world that doesn’t see it, without trying to dampen their joy. So often people feel guilty when they experience joy while they ‘should’ be grieving, but nothing could be more destructive. There is no ‘should’, no right way to grieve.
Grief might linger for a day, a week, or longer but even in that grief, something will catch our attention that is pure joy, beauty, laughter, magic and we just need to let it in. It doesn’t take the grief away; it simply allows us to feel more than one emotion. Grief when allowed to just be will fade unless we attach to it. We can wear our grief like a banner, like a badge, like an armor to prevent joy from coming in. Many do. Society has a lot of rules about how we ‘should’ be with grief. Those rules seldom work.
Far too often we identify loss or death as a punishment. ‘Why me? Why did the Creator let this happen to me?’ The answer is really simple. Life is just a series of energy moving in and out of our lives, we move in and out of other people’s lives, too. Spring comes, then summer, autumn and fall every year. Humans birth, live and die at our own time, in our own way. The ease in grief comes when we realize it is part of living on this planet. Nothing is permanent. The joy won’t stay~ neither will the sorrow.
Humans are fluid. Our emotions are exactly as we say, energy in motion. When we stifle them, or try to deny them we create stagnant blocked life-force. The sooner we accept grief as a natural part of loving, as a phase of life, the sooner we can heal ourselves and also enjoy the joy of each moment of life. Grief is not going to take a holiday, so we might as well let it be, decorate it with joyful memories from the past, and new memories from today.
Grief does not take holidays, it doesn’t give them either. Our holidays will be what we make of them. Our joy is ours to create, it comes from within and we can find it in the mundane as well as the celebrations of life. Don’t give grief more power than it really has, just let it be heard.
I bless you all with the joy of the day, whatever that is for you! It’s your life, your menu, and your choice to find the bits of joy wherever they show up and hold them in your heart to carry you through the grief that always comes.
Catherine
You can read more about me here and get social media contacts as well
We don’t have to chose one emotion over another, we don’t have to hide our joyful feelings or feel guilty about them because of grief or sorrowful periods. We can experience all emotions moment by moment, even if we are also experiencing a long period of deep sorrow, deep joy, deep anger etc.
Catherine Clarity Whisperer Blog 