by Arielle Arbushites
There is a particular kind of pressure that comes with the holidays. The expectation that we will show up, participate, decorate, gather, celebrate, and somehow manage to make everything feel the way it used to feel.
But grief has a way of rearranging things: now there is empty chair, a familiar recipe that doesn’t taste the same when someone else makes it, a song playing in the background that makes you stop in your tracks. The traditions we once looked forward to can become reminders of someone who isn’t here to share them with us.
And sometimes, in our effort to make up for that absence, we forget to make room for ourselves.
We forget that we are allowed to enjoy a holiday and ALSO miss someone terribly. That laughter doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten. That changing a tradition doesn’t mean we’re letting go. That saying no to an invitation can be an act of self-preservation, not an act of withdrawal or isolation.
Grief asks us to make room for what we’ve lost. But we also have to make room for the person we are becoming in its wake.
Maybe that means leaving dinner early. Maybe it means keeping the tradition that makes us feel close to someone we love even if we cry a little, or maybe it means abandoning the one that hurts too much this year. Maybe it means doing breath work or having a good cry in the car before walking into a gathering, or maybe it means laughing so hard at a memory that it makes the sadness takes a back seat for a moment.
There is no magic way of doing this well.
We don’t have to earn our moments of happiness by first proving how much we hurt.
We also don’t have to carry every tradition forward, meet every expectation, or make everyone else comfortable with the way we grieve. WE DON’T OWE ANYONE AN EXPLANATION. Grief is burdensome enough.
We can make room for grief without giving it every room in the house. Okay?
We need to make room for ourselves, too. Perhaps that’s what this season asks of us: not to choose between remembering and living, between honoring someone we love and caring for the person we are today. But to understand that both can exist at the same time, in the same holiday season.
So, if the holidays feel different this year, let them be different. If you need to change the plans, change them. If you need company, ask for it. If you need quiet, claim it. And if you find yourself experiencing a moment of unexpected joy, please let yourself have it. Your grief deserves a gift.
