Tag: Jewish High Holy Days

Some Practical Ideas From Other Parents for Navigating Holidays After Child Loss

It cannot be overstated:  holidays are extremely hard after loss.  Every family gathering highlights the hole where my son SHOULD be, but ISN’T.

There is no “right way” or “wrong way” to handle the holidays after losing a child.

For many, there is only survival-especially the very first year.

These days also stir great internal conflict:  I want to enjoy and celebrate my living children and my family still here while missing my son that isn’t. Emotions run high and are, oh so difficult to manage.

So I’m including some ideas from other bereaved parents on how they’ve handled the holidays.  Many of these suggestions could be adapted for any “special” day of the year.

Not all will appeal to everyone nor will they be appropriate for every family.  But they are a place to start.

Read the rest here: Practical Ideas for Dealing with the Holidays after Child Loss

THIS is What the Bereaved Need From Friends and Family During Holidays

I know it is hard.  I know you don’t truly understand how I feel.  You can’t.  It wasn’t your child.

I know I may look and act like I’m “better”.  I know that you would love for things to be like they were:  BEFORE.  But they aren’t.

I know my grief interferes with your plans.  I know it is uncomfortable to make changes in traditions we have observed for years.  But I can’t help it.  I didn’t ask for this to be my life.

I know that every year I seem to need something different.  I know that’s confusing and may be frustrating.  But I’m working this out as I go.  I didn’t get a “how to” manual when I buried my son.  It’s new for me every year too.

Read the rest here: Grief and Holidays: What the Bereaved Need From Friends and Family

How To Have Hard Conversations Around the Holidays

You don’t have to bury a child to know that changing long-standing family traditions around holidays is a hard, hard thing.

Just ask a parent trying to work out Thanksgiving and Christmas for the first time after an adult child marries.  Suddenly the way things have “always been” are no longer the way things are.

Holidays typically involve so many more people and family members than everyday get-togethers and each person brings expectations, emotions and personal history to the table.

Read the rest here: Grief, Holidays and Hard Conversations

Can’t Stop Time: Here Come the Holidays

When I was forced into this life I didn’t choose, I had no model for how to navigate holidays post child loss. Not one Thanksgiving dinner nor Christmas morning of my life had been marred by the deep, dark MISSING that fills a bereaved parent’s heart.

So I muddled through, best I could, striving hard to embrace and accommodate my own and my family’s pain while managing expectations of those outside our immediate grief circle.

It was hard.

It was emotionally exhausting.

It still is, some days and seasons.

But if I’ve gained any wisdom from ten holiday seasons spent without Dominic, it’s this: Better to face it and make a plan than to ignore it and let things unfold willy-nilly.

I’m praying for you. Now. In October.

❤ Melanie

I will confess: I’m no better at this than the first set of holidays after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.

Every. Single. Year. has brought changes and challenges on top of the empty chairs round the family table.

Since Dominic left us we’ve had additions (two grandchildren and various significant others) and sadly, more subtractions (my mother joined Dom in 2019). We’ve dealt with distance, deployment, healthcare and retail work schedules, a pandemic and lots of other, less easily defined tensions and difficulties.

Read the rest here: So…Yeah, The Holidays.

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