Creating Space for Grief and Loss During the Holiday Season [Part 3]
Today's episode is sponsored by Dr. Kimber’s upcoming book, Still: Making a Whole When Parts Go Missing, which will be released in late January. It’s part three of a three part mini-series to help us prepare and approach the holiday season in a way that works for each of us, so we can end the year and move into the new year minimizing stress and regret, and feeling more connected and refreshed.
In this episode, we're talking about grief and the holidays, and how to hold the balance of what is and what isn’t, especially during a season that may include gatherings with family and friends, and memories.
Key moments include:
4:55 – One useful way to navigate grief over the holidays: name it
6:54 – Thoughts for when you’re grieving about how family dynamics have been shifted
8:12 – How practicing gratitude by noticing the good can be helpful
9:10 – The importance of carving out time to experience grief
10:25 – How grief requires us to reach out to people to be seen
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Please remember that this podcast is not a replacement for treatment by a healthcare or mental health professional. This content is created for education and entertainment purposes only.
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This transcript was created by A.I. — please forgive translation mistakes.
[00:00:00] Welcome to I Thought I Was Over This.
[00:00:05] I'm your host, Dr. Kimber, a licensed clinical psychologist, trauma healer, and fellow life journeyer. Every episode we dive into the science of humaning. Whether you find yourself feeling like you've just hit an iceberg and don't know where help is coming from, or you're ready to trade in your raft for something bigger, you aren't alone.
[00:00:27] Grab what you need, get comfortable, and let's do this.
[00:00:36] Today's episode is sponsored by my upcoming book, Still: Making a Whole When Parts Go Missing. This is going to be released late January, 2023. Today we are gonna talk about grief and the holidays, and in this episode I'm gonna just talk with you about how to hold the balance of what is and what isn't.
[00:01:05] What's been missed. And again, if you are with me for a while, you know, occasionally my cat does not cooperate and today is the day that I am recording and I am not getting any cooperation. So if you hear my cat in the background, that's a scenario I, I've given her food, she has freedom. and she, for some reason, when I go into this voice, she just wants to be with me.
[00:01:39] So you may hear in the background. So grief. Grief is a whole bunch of things can be filled with sadness, maybe anger can feel unfair, here can be regret unmet longings. A wish for more time, more memories. I think the holidays, you know, those were times when we would all get together and the absence of someone can really be felt.
[00:02:13] I know I have had two friends close to me die. They have December birthdays. We had an annual cookie party. Typical. Christmas things, and I think it can be just a hard time overall. The longing that they were together with us when we're doing our white elephant exchanges, missing the cookie exchange, their personalities.
[00:02:48] I know I even miss parts of myself or parts of my life in the holidays where. You know, when I was younger, we would play lots of games. We would put puzzles together. My grandparents, who for now for me and my family, are the ones that I long for, that I miss, not only for their personalities and what they bring my grandpa taking forever to open.
[00:03:18] His gifts and delighting in each one, having to try them on while us kids waited impatiently to open our next gift since we did the kind of thing where we opened them one at a time. And my grandma for all of her cooking and presents, not presents as in gifts, but just her presence and plain peanut and her and my aunt in her tiny kitchen making the wears.
[00:03:53] Uh, my Auntie Chris, making mud pie, them bumping in together because the kitchen. About the size of an RV kitchen. I mean, it was so small and they would be laughing and all the ways they were bumping into each other. And sometimes there was the frustration of bumping into each other, but we were all together and we were catching up with one another.
[00:04:18] And you know, since they've died, we don't get together in that way. And I miss that. And yet there's other things that have taken its place. So now I have my own family with my own traditions, which in some ways changes and shifts because now Eden is away at college. And so the decorating of the house, the decorating of the tree, it's different now.
[00:04:50] So one of the ways that we can navigate grief in the holidays is just to name it, to name what you. Sometimes it's helpful to name what you didn't really appreciate when it was happening or if there's any regrets that you have. Grief can take the form of lots of things, and so it can even be heightened without our consciousness of it.
[00:05:22] So we can turn to lots of holiday baking. We can turn to. Alcohol, avoiding overshopping buying things all in the name of Christmas. But what's really going on under the surface is that we're missing people that we love. Possibly you're missing what your family did look like. Maybe you've gone through a divorce.
[00:05:53] Maybe you've moved and you no longer are celebrating the holidays with the community that you felt connected with. Maybe circumstances have changed in your grieving that you no longer have the job of the Christmas party that you've loved to attend. I think the holidays really mark for us, the changing of times.
[00:06:20] What has. Usually we do things yearly and so when they're different we make note of that. And you know, the holidays can be an amazing time and that can be true too. I think it's, it's important to hold the complexity of what the holidays bring up. Maybe even you grieve that family dynamic. Haven't shifted, as I talked about in the last episode of this series.
[00:06:58] Now, there's a lot of different layers to grief, and one of the things that can help is when you journal, when you notice what you're longing for, what you're grieving is it primes the pump for things that you weren't aware of to come to the surface. And when we're faithful to keeping the structure of noticing journaling, of acknowledging the feelings, maybe noticing, you know, those habits that I said, how are you eating?
[00:07:32] How are you drinking? How are you shopping? Are you binge watching? Are you on social media if you're shopping and can't help yourself get off social media. Get off the internet. It is so almost impossible to fight the algorithms. Just get off. Don't tempt yourself that way. Instead, get with yourself. Do some meditation.
[00:08:04] Notice the good practice gratitude by really noticing the good in your. And when we do these things, when we get to a grounded place, what it does is it allows us to then try to notice our dreams, and when we can notice what we're dreaming about, it helps us know what could be going on underneath it all, and an easy way to interpret dreams, as I've talked about in a previous episode.
[00:08:40] Is, you know, you are each major character in the dream. A part of you is a major character, and so what is that revealing to you? What's coming up that you need to work on? What's coming up, that you have an opportunity to heal, and if you have had a major loss in this last year, You really have to carve out the time to experience grief.
[00:09:12] You can't just overschedule yourself. You are doing yourself a disservice and you potentially are really setting yourself up to have a blowup or a meltdown, a disconnection of sort with those family members who are present. It's your responsibility. To the best of your ability. I understand if how you're working two jobs and you can't do it, but if you can at all possible create space for grief, you need to do it so that you don't have regrets, that you've spent the holidays disconnected.
[00:10:00] We are created. To be seen. We are created to be understood and be attuned to and in our grief. One of the most important things is that we're not alone. We don't have that feeling of alone inside of us, and sometimes that requires us to reach out to people in order for us to be seen. Just letting someone know, Hey, I'm having a really hard time.
[00:10:32] Don't need you to fix it, but can you hear? Can you hear my heart today? And often people are grateful for the suggestion, oh, you don't need me to fix you. You just need me to listen. I can do that. And so, what do you need this holiday, this internal world of your. What space is it longing for in order to navigate the grief?
[00:11:03] And again, grief has lots of different layers, circumstances, family dynamic changes, loss of a loved one, loss of a community, lots of different things. This episode is coming out right as the chaos is turning. So what do you need to do? How can you create space? Naps are great, are just getting away going for a walk.
[00:11:35] But what are the ways that you're gonna reset when you are just feeling the weight of facing into the grief? What can you do to reconnect with yourself? I want you to think about. Today before you get into the circumstance, if you're already there, think about what is it that you need. Social connection is so helpful when we are feeling the heaviness and social connection in the way that I am using it is that we're seeing.
[00:12:17] We're understood. We, we feel connected with, it's not a social connection where we're being super official, where we aren't focused on our internal world and we're only focused on the other person. Now they're ne back and forth is great, but some of us can deflect. Some of us can deflect by asking all the questions.
[00:12:45] And when you are in a place of grief, it can feel easier in the short term to not share. But in the long term, you know, we need the relief. And I'm like, yeah, she's feeling it with us. She is wanting to be picked up. So again, some of our coping strategies, it intuitively it can feel as if we want to deflect.
[00:13:14] and not focus on our grief, and, and there's a time and place for that. But ultimately having other people see and receive our feelings and attune to us, it brings such relief. And so I really encourage you. To make those kind of conversations happen. And of course, like at a company party, yeah, that's not probably the place to do that.
[00:13:46] But who are the people in your life that can really hold your grief and contain your feelings, your sadness, maybe your anger, feeling of it un being unfair, that you weren't ready, wasn't on your timing. So I'm gonna keep this episode short. We have a lot going on, usually around this time, and so I hope that this is an encouragement to you to find your way through grief, which is step one is noticing, taking the time, carving out intentional time for you to notice your grief journal.
[00:14:33] Is a great way to notice it. And then the second thing is, who are you gonna share this with? Who are you gonna share this with and how can you be seen and received with the feelings that you have and the things to be on guard about? What are your coping strategies? How do you deflect, how do you distract?
[00:14:55] How do you deflate in both healthy ways and unhealthy? So I hope that you have a blessed holiday season, whatever holiday you may be celebrating, and I look forward to. Reconnecting with you in the new year. I'm gonna take a couple weeks off.
[00:15:22] Thank you for taking me with you. If you haven't already signed up for my newsletter, one reader called it a letter to your soul. It has reflections, questions and suggestions, and each one go to dr.kimber.net to sign up. That's D R K I M B E R.net. You'll also be the first to know about events and the release of my book still making a hole when parts go missing.
[00:15:53] Until next time.