LOSS AMID HOLIDAY JOY
December 24th, 2010
Is it possible to find happiness during holidays and family celebrations, while you are experiencing overwhelming feelings of sadness, anger, frustration and envy toward those who don’t share your pain?
If you have lost a loved one during the year, I think the five patterns of grieving I described in my book suggest some ways you can find comfort amidst your feelings of loss.
• Memorialists can preserve the memory of their loved one by lighting a candle, writing a poem, listening to some special music, or continuing a family tradition in honor of that person.
• Normalizers like to gather family and friends together as they always did when their loved one was alive. In this way, they
• Activists want to contribute to others as a way of giving back or paying forward. You might feel good about volunteering in activities that relate to your loved one’s death – a hospital, hospice, or charity that was with yu in the last days of your loved one’s life.
• Seekers may turn to spiritual thoughts. You may want to spend some time in contemplation at your church, synagogue, mosque or temple. Join with others in your spiritual community, connect with nature, pray, meditate, think about what is important to you in life and pursue it.
If you don’t relate to any of these ideas, create your own way to find comfort. Above all, be with others who understand your grief.
December 31st, 2010 at 8:51 pm
I fortuately discovered an article about your work in a recent Boston Globe. I just visited your website for the first time this evening, New Year’s Eve 2011. I lost my dear husband, party animal and soul mate of 22 years of marriage and 25 years of togetherness last January. This year has been very difficult, naturally, but I have stayed in turn embracing my grief and busy with activities and travel initiated largely by my blessedly wide “life support system.” Tonight, I feel especially bereft as the first year anniversary approaches. My husband and I had developed a tradition of experiencing the New Year transition in a different place in the world as often as we could. Sometimes, it was in a neighboring town; sometimes it was a vacation in spots in USA, Canada, or Europe. I miss my partner in fun and adventure!!! We were very realistic that the “New Year” is simply the next tick of the clock of time, a modern Western-mankind method of keeping score! But, I miss my partner and his loving care of me,sense of adventure, fun and WOW social man as he was! I had constructed a very full life as a long single woman before he “blast” into my scene, certainly “exploded” into a shared very wonderful life with him….and now…I am engaged in trying to pick up the pieces and see just how they will fit for me now. Thank-you for providing this forum for me to vent a bit tonight! Due to a dysfuntional upbringing, I sought years of psychotherapy in decades past from wonderful practitioners in Boston. I’ve sampled a bit of grief counseling in the past year. I identify myself as a “Memorializer” with a good dollop of “Normalizer” mixed in. Since my husband was a fighter pilot from back in the Cold War days and always LOVED flying, I plan to invite children and adults in our lives to construct balsa wood planes (I will provide them ASAP I purchase them!) and decorate them (or not!) in memory of our dearly cherished departed “force of nature” this coming spring. I plan to fly them from a tree which is overhanging our gravesite in time for Memorial Day Weekend, when the memorial park allows pretty much anything for that brief time. Happy New Year, welcome of not, it is coming with all the possibilities and wonders contained in the gift of each year past.