Tag: holidays

Christmas 2024: If You Think You Can’t Hold On, Let Go

This has been an odd (to put it mildly) Christmas season. I haven’t done half of what I normally do and now there’s no time to catch up and do it.

I’ve been off balance since the first of November, hanging on by the seat of my pants and just barely managing the necessities.

So I really, really, really needed to read what I wrote several years ago.

Back then there was no chance I’d produce a full-fledged, decked out spread for Christmas. But I’ve gotten better at it since.

Just not this year. So if you are falling behind or falling down, you’re not alone! 

❤ Melanie

So many ways to be reminded of how hard it is to hold on in these days and weeks around Christmas.

If your heart is barely able to beat, the pressure to be “hap-hap-happy” can send you over the edge.

If your home is empty of cheerful voices, the constant barrage of commercials touting family togetherness can leave you feeling oh, so lonely.

Early sunsets and darker nights send feel-good hormones flying and leave a body aching for just a little relief from anxious and depressing thoughts.

SadGirlBeach

When you think you can’t hold on, let go.  

Read the rest here: When You Think You Can’t Hold On

Christmas 2024: Grief Glitter, Tucked in Every Corner

I’ll never forget one Christmas when I and some other moms organized a craft day for our preschool kids at a local church.

In our youthful enthusiasm, we thought doing homemade cards accented by glitter was a good idea. Boy, were we wrong!

Those bits of metallic bliss went everywhere-in hair, on clothes, in the carpet…we spent twice as much time trying to clean up as we spent making memories with the children. Never again!

So this quote about grief and glitter really struck home in my heart.  

❤ Melanie

Every now and then I run across a quote or a meme that is perfect. 

This is one of them. 

Read the rest here: Grief Glitter, Tucked In Every Corner

Christmas 2024: Good Answers to Hard (Sensitive, Inappropriate) Questions

The holiday season is full of opportunities to gather with folks we don’t see all that often. 

It’s also an invitation for those same friends and family to ask all the questions they’ve thought about on the other 364 days of they year but couldn’t ask. 

And sometimes those questions are difficult, or insensitive or inappropriate. 

What to do? What to say?

Here are some great answers from other bereaved parents.

❤ Melanie

I was utterly amazed at the questions people plied me with not long after Dominic’s accident.

They ranged from digging for details about what happened (when we ourselves were still unsure) to ridiculous requests for when I’d be returning to my previous responsibilities in a local ministry.

Since then, many of my bereaved parent friends have shared even more questions that have been lobbed at them across tables, across rooms and in the grocery store.

Recently there was a post in our group that generated so many excellent answers to these kinds of questions, I asked permission to reprint them here (without names, of course!).

So here they are, good answers to hard (or inappropriate or just plain ridiculous) questions:

Read the rest here: Good Answers to Hard (Insensitive, Inappropriate) Questions

Christmas 2024: Surviving Siblings and Christmas

I first shared this post in 2016 when we had muddled through the first two holiday seasons after Dominic left us and were headed for a third.

Now facing our eleventh, there are some things that have changed a lot (adding grandchildren and losing my mama) and some things that remain the same (the ongoing struggle to balance everyone’s needs and expectations with the reality of sorrow).

I still find the principles I outlined years ago to be the best way to approach the season. We certainly don’t always get it right but we continue to strive to honor one another, to honor the true meaning of Christmas and to honor Dominic.

❤ Melanie

How do I honor the child for whom memories are all I have and love well the children with whom I am still making memories?

That’s a question I ask myself often.

And it is especially difficult to answer for celebrations and holidays, special events and birthdays.

Read the rest here: Surviving Siblings and Christmas

Christmas 2024: 25 Ways to Bring Holiday Hope to the Grieving

This is the eleventh Christmas without Dominic. There really are no words to describe the intersection of holiday cheer and another milestone in this journey of child loss.

I’m not sad all the time-far from it. Often I am very, very happy.

But I will never stop missing him, missing the family we used to be and missing our blissful ignorance of how quickly and utterly life can change in an instant.

And I will never outgrow the need to have others remember him as well, to encourage my heart and the hearts of my family members and to help us make it through another year, another Christmas. 

Here are some great ways to do it:  25 Ways to Give Holiday Hope to the Grieving

Christmas 2024: Why I Still Put Up a Christmas Tree


I confess that I am already exhausted and we are barely into December!

I haven’t yet brought the tree down from the attic but plan to do it early next week.

I’m looking forward to the opportunity to sit and savor the twinkling lights that remind me that darkness doesn’t win.

❤ Melanie

It’s a question every hurting heart has to answer if you celebrate a traditional western Christmas:  Will I put up a tree this year?

I had a few months of lonely travel through the Valley of the Shadow of Death before I had to answer that one.

Dominic left us at Easter, so by December I had learned that wishing didn’t make anything better nor did it make decisions disappear.

As Christmas drew near, I just could not bring down the usual decorations from the attic.

So I didn’t.

Read the rest here: Why I Still Put Up a Christmas Tree

Christmas 2024: How To Survive December With a Broken Heart

It comes up again and again-and not just for the parents facing their year of “firsts”:  How do I survive December with a broken heart?

There’s no single answer or list of things to do that will suit every family.

But there are some general principles that can make even this awful reality a little easier…

Read the rest here: How To Survive December With a Broken Heart

Christmas 2024: Seven Practical Ways to Help Grieving Parents During the Holidays

Most parents feel a little stressed during the holidays.

For bereaved parents, the rush toward the “Season of Joy” is doubly frightening.

Constant reminders that this is the “most wonderful time of the year” make our broken hearts just that much more out of place. Who cares what you get for Christmas when the one thing your heart desires–your child, alive and whole–is unavailable…

It is so hard to find a way to trudge through the tinsel when what you really want to do is climb into bed and wake up when it’s all over.

Here are some practical ways family and friends can help grieving parents during the holidays:

  1. Don’t resist or criticize arrangements a bereaved parent makes to help him or her get through this season.If they are brave enough to broach the subject, receive their suggestions with grace and encourage them with love.  Do your best to accommodate the request.
  2. If the bereaved parent doesn’t approach you–consider thoughtfully, gracefully approaching him or her about what might make the holidays more bearable.But don’t expect a well-laid plan-I didn’t get a “how-to” book when I buried my child…this is new to me and very, very painful.  I am doing the best I can to keep my head above the waves and I cannot be expected to captain the boat through these turbulant waters.
  3. Don’t be surprised if a bereaved parent doesn’t want to exchange gifts (or at least, not receive gifts). No one can rewind time or restore my family circle to wholeness and I just can’t think of anything else that I want or need.
  4. Don’t assume that the bereaved parent should be relieved of all meal duties around the holiday.For some of us, doing the routine things like baking and cooking are healing.  For others, there just isn’t energy for anything other than the most fundamental daily tasks. ASK if they want to contribute.
  5. Don’t corner surviving children for a private update on their parent’s state of mind.My children are grieving too.  When you expect them to give an update on me you diminish their pain and put them in a difficult position.  If you want to know, ask me.
  6. If there are young children in the family, it might be helpful to offer to take them to some of the parties/gatherings/church services that their parent may not be up to attending. Ask, but don’t be upset if they say “no”–it might still be too traumatic for either the child or the parent to be separated from one another.
  7. Ask them to share about the one they miss.  One of my greatest fears as a grieving parent is that my child will be forgotten.  But we might not speak up because we don’t want to make others feel uncomfortable.

I know that life goes on, the calendar pages keep turning and I can’t stop time in its tracks.  I greet each day with as much faith and courage as I can muster. This season requires a little more-and I will need help to make it through.

Reflections on a Decade of Holidays After Child Loss

Fellow brave and bereaved, I don’t know how you feel coming off this late-in-the-month Thanksgiving headed straight for Christmas but I’m kind of tired.

Yesterday I shared about post-holiday blues but this is something different.

I love, love, love any time I get with my family and I want to be clear that THEY do not place demands on me I find burdensome.

But…I am no better prepared to trudge through all the holly-jolly THIS year than I was the second year after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven. (I don’t even count the first year when shock overwhelmed my heart.)

This far along in my grief journey many folks I rub shoulders with are either unaware that child loss is part of my story or they’ve tucked that “incident” away in some rarely accessed section of their memory. And while I do not tote my loss around like a token demanding special attention, it absolutely continues to inform how I experience every day and especially how I experience holidays.

So I wanted to share a few thoughts about THIS year-the eleventh Christmas I will celebrate since Dom left us.

  • It’s still hard. It still takes 110% effort to show up, engage, maintain enthusiasm, DO all the things (or even my abbreviated list of things), not let my emotions overrun my desire to be polite and find time to sit silent in the circle of sacred sorrow that helps my heart hold on to hope.
  • I have to constantly revisit my own advice (which I will repost in the coming days) about giving myself permission to bow out of whatever I simply can not face.
  • Communication is key. It sometimes surprises me (but shouldn’t!) that other people can’t read my mind and most forget what I told them last year or the year before. Add to that things change from year-to-year and there’s no way around the need for at least a casual conversation about what THIS year is going to look like.
  • Grace greases the wheels of relationships. Grace for myself. Grace for family and friends. Grace for strangers-including the clerk at the grocery store-who are probably doing the best they can too.
  • Increased social interaction-whether a function of more planned activities or just the crowds of shoppers-means it’s harder for me to escape the pressure of social anxiety that has developed post loss. I try to choose carefully what I add to my calendar, graciously send regrets for the rest and then refuse to feel guilty about it.
  • I am more careful about hydrating and not over indulging in any foods that tend to send my body into overdrive. It’s less about the calories (although I need to be mindful of those!) than it is about the wild swings poor nutrition produces in my sense of physical well-being.
  • I must plan rest stops along the way. I can’t overschedule, overstimulate and overwork myself and still maintain a semblance of control over my emotional response to the grief waves and grief ambushes this season is sure to provide. I try to set aside at least a few minutes EVERY DAY and (if possible) one day PER WEEK that promises quiet solitude and the opportunity to unwind and unspool built up tension and anxiety.
  • I purpose to find joyful moments and beautiful memories when gathered with others and when doing all the things holidays require. I hold them close and cherish them.

Most importantly, I remind my heart that this season is only a season.

It doesn’t last forever.

I will survive this like I’ve survived every day since Dominic left us-one moment, one breath at a time.

Thanksgiving 2024: Post Holiday Blues

I always like to share this post after a holiday because I never want any hurting heart to think the pain they feel “the day after” is not a normal part of the grief journey.

It is absolutely, positively NORMAL to feel more anxious, more sad, more lonely, more despair once the plates are cleared away and everyone else has returned to their respective homes.

Grief is funny that way-sometimes the very busyness and noisy conversation we dread so much BEFORE a big day turns out to be a good distraction from the quiet desperation and longing that would otherwise demand attention.

And then…in the quiet, in the stillness it all comes crashing down.

It’s a paradox really-that grieving hearts can be more anxious and more sorrowful BEFORE and AFTER a milestone day, birthday or holiday than on the day itself.

That’s not true for everyone, but it’s a frequent comment in our closed bereaved parent groups.

Read the rest here: Post Holiday Blues: When The Grief Comes Crashing Down