Coping With Christmas Grief

Viewing the holiday season differently is important for one's surviving the grieving process during this time. But how do we do that?

    

What is the answer? We begin with a tool a Clinical Psychologist friend of mine (Jane Vair-Bissler, PhD) encourages her clients to utilize in their grief process. The technique? Breaking down a problem (whether it be anxiety, anger or in this case, facing the holidays) into manageable bite-sized pieces.  The why? Breaking a problem down into manageable bite-sized pieces is a technique that allows the griever to move back away from the brick wall of grief that has become the griever's current life, their past and their perceived future. By viewing life -  the past grieving, current pain and the view that life will never be any different than the current status in small chunks - it allows for possibilities that were not noticed previously. Thus a little control can be gained in the seemingly out of control life.

 

Facing life in manageable bite-sized pieces encourages the griever to live in the present - to separate the past holidays when you may have been able to handle more daily stress and realistically expect more of yourself. Further, it disconnects one's thoughts from catastrophizing future holidays.

 

There are no specific cures for the pain of grief and holiday grief requires different tips and tools to navigate the days leading up to the holiday dates. The tips included in the following manageable bite-sized pieces appear to follow the categories of: 

~ Self Care  ~Traditions: Choose to Change, Create or Eliminate  ~ Honoring Your Deceased Child . (This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of "to dos" but ideas to choose from as this is to assist not overwhelm!)

 

 

 

 

*  Accept support  

*  Allow/ask others to help with Christmas tasks (card writing, shopping, baking, decorating, child caring for certain activities or short term to care for self)

*  Feel your feelings, (which means leaving the room or activity if necessary, cry, telling people how you’re feeling)

*  Choose whether to participate in activities or not   

*  Try one new activity for the holiday season, i.e.: do something for someone else, adopt a family to sponsor for Christmas giving, sponsor gift giving for a name from a giving tree, attend a new church, volunteer for the sick, elderly, hospital, soup kitchen, humane society

*  Join or connect with a bereavement support group

Buy yourself a special gift to open on a particularly difficult day,(a shawl, candle, book, stuffed animal, clothing item to solidify your first year’s experience through grief)

*  Allow yourself grief time (time to cry, feel your feelings, watch a sad movie, take a walk)

*  Avoid excess: food, drink, activities, spending

*  Journal about your holiday grief-the positives and the negatives, vent your feelings, notice your challenges, changes and process.

   

       Traditions: Choose to Change, Create or Eliminate:

*  Decorating: choose whether you want to decorate at all, continue as in the past or change some or create new traditions

*  Food/ Eating/ Meals Choose whether to follow established traditions or create new ones. Will you bake cookies, candies, treats or not? Will you continue the serving the traditional menu or change it? Will you continue the same seating pattern or try buffet style or TV trays? Will you change the dinner hosting placement as in a different relative’s home or will you eat at a restaurant? Will you leave town altogether or celebrate in a different location? 

*  Activities: Stockings:  Continue to hang the deceased child’s stocking in which family members place written memories of the loved one to remain in the stocking year after year (to be read at a time of the family’s choosing) 

Plan an activity your deceased child loved to do (sports game, pizza night, movie night, skating, baking cookies, etc) 

*  Buy presents for disadvantaged children/families, i.e.:  children in hospitals, in foster care, in homeless shelters in the deceased child’s name

*  Decorate the child’s headstone at the cemetery (with cards, Christmas trees, lights, stuffed animals, etc)   

*  Decorate someone else’s headstone at the cemetery

*  Create a memorial to your child in your home, school, office, etc. This could be their own small tree with collected ornaments or memorabilia.  

*  Set a place setting at the holiday table or the deceased child  

*  Have family members share a memory of the child at a time of their choosing with all family present

*  Bake cookies/treats for a needy family, homeless shelter, fire department, non-profit agency 

*  Participate in community-based memorial services where you can hang ornaments in public places for your child

 

*  Sew blankets or make quilts representative of your child

*  Make handmade ornaments for family, friends, neighbors as reminder of your child

Including all family members, create a memory wreath, a memory box, or memory book using pictures, memorabilia, ornaments, etc

*  Decorate outdoor memorial trees

*  Plant an outdoor Christmas tree and decorate it yearly

*  Light a candle or candles in a wreath each day or create a routine to light the candles to honor your child

*  Donate a financial amount of what you may have spent on your child in their name to a children’s fund, organization or foundation

*  Buy a special yearly Christmas ornament yearly Christmas ornament and start a memorial tree for your child

*  Give gifts with memories attached of your child: pictures of the child, a tree to plant, a recipe, music, art, whatever represents your child

*  Order US Postal stamps with your child’s picture on them (www.stamps.com) 

*  Pray. However this looks to you, it lifts you and your child

 

Breaking the stress of the holidays into three manageable bite-sized pieces: Self Care, Traditions, and Honoring your deceased child will:

 

*  establish direction, control and focus for you in your grief.  

*  encourage you to let go of the expectation that you have to "do your grief" in a certain way during the holidays

*  allows you to look at life differently by taking action  while feeling your grief (action = movement in grief)

*  it invites you to move into your heart (introducing the movement from the sorrow of the loss to living with the loss)

*  encourages you to see yourself differently 

 

Why would a griever want to use this technique? The individual answer would differ from person to person but I recently heard a metaphor that seems to adequately address that question. The human heart pumps out some blood for itself before it pumps out all the rest of the supply to all the other parts of the body for its maintenance. Grievers need to see that they cannot survive by themselves, that they can't provide for anyone else and they cannot live life until they take care of themselves.

 

Holiday grief will be a lifetime reoccurring event after the death of a child. There will be sad days, difficult moments and new memories. It seems that processing manageable bite-sized pieces of the grief process is a compassionate way of facing the obstacles and challenges of holiday grief. 

 

 I wish you moments of peace during the holiday season.... Chris