When the Season of Light is Anything but Bright

Today I heard of a second friend losing a parent in less than a month. In the last three months, I’ve had two friends diagnosed with breast cancer, three friends lost beloved pets, one person in a car accident, two more required disabling surgeries, and one filed for divorce.

While the holidays are a time for family and friends, joy and merriment, for so many, the holidays are painful reminders of who’s missing, what’s been lost, and questions of how they’ll get through.

This time of year, we often hear, I can’t wait for this year to be over.  This year has been very good to me, but I’ve definitely been one of those people.  While I’m pretty good at remembering my blessings, I’ve definitely wanted years to end, as if a turn of a calendar page would magically set things right.

Of course, that’s not how it happens.

Shouts of Happy New Year don’t bring back loved ones, don’t mend marriages, they certainly don’t mend broken bodies or broken hearts, and no amount of horns or fireworks will pay the rent or put food on the table.

So what can you do to support someone who isn’t feeling the holiday spirit this year?

• Extend the invitations to holiday gatherings as you normally would with the understanding that they might be declined.  Follow up with an invitation to a quiet dinner or drink, 1:1, avoiding Christmas fanfare and revelry, and just be available for your friend.
• Be patient. Don’t take their lack of reciprocation of, or participation in, all things holiday as a bah-humbug on your Christmas parade.  It has nothing to do with you.
• Extend grace.  If there’s something you always do together – shopping, wrapping gifts, cookie exchanges – again, extend the invitation, but this year might be the gap in your tradition.

And what can you do if you’re the one not feeling festive?

• Be gentle with yourself.  Honor that you’re hurting and you need to grieve and heal and regroup however that looks to you.
• If you muster the energy to go to a gathering, but 30 minutes later, you feel you need to leave, go.  No need to feel guilty.  Honor yourself for giving it a try.
• If money is not an issue, try to make the holidays a little brighter for someone else. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but in my rough times, whether my heart was broken or my wallet was empty, if I could do something for someone else – a little something or a big something – it helped me heal, it helped me remember the many blessings I still had even in those moments of utter loss, it helped remind me that I’m still me, I’m still here, and I have to keep going.