Tag: thanksgiving

Finding Joy Amidst Grief: Holiday Strategies

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.

Coping With Post-Holiday Grief

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

Embracing Sorrow: A Thanksgiving Reflection

If you woke this morning feeling more broken than blessed, I see you.

If you could care less about the bounty on the table and can only feel the barrenness in your heart, I know how you feel.

Today doesn’t have to be any special way, my friend. Give yourself grace. Give yourself permission to feel what you feel and do what you do and not do what you can’t do.

❤ Melanie

THANKSGIVING PRAYER FOR HURTING HEARTS

Father God,

We live in a world that isn’t always (or even often) what we hope for, pray for and long for.

But here we are.

Two hands open and waiting for the blessing You have promised in our brokenness.

I am oh, so thankful for the many ways You have blessed me, continue to bless me and uphold me with Your righteous right arm. I know, know, know that if You were not walking with me in this Valley, I would have given up and given in long ago.

I am not ungrateful. I am blessed.

But I am also broken.

My heart longs desperately for what it cannot have. I am forced to walk forward but I want to turn back time. I’m grateful for every face around my table but always thinking about the one that will never sit there again.

I miss those I love who have run ahead to joyous celebration in Heaven. I long for just a taste of divine joy as I wait my turn to join them.

Thanksgiving big and loud just isn’t in my playlist anymore. Quiet gratitude that makes space for sorrowful reflection is more my style.

Make me truly thankful for the promise that no matter how often circumstances change or how dreadful those changes may be, You are the same-yesterday, today and forever!

Your steadfast love holds us fast. I rest in that truth.

Help me hold onto hope. Help me hold onto every good and perfect gift You still give me as I wait. Grease the wheels of every relationship with grace.

Greet me this morning with new mercies and fresh strength.

Give me the strength to endure, the grace to participate, the breath to speak love and the confidence that you see every tear I shed when no one is looking.

Amen

Remembering Loved Ones During Thanksgiving

As families gather around tables and in backyards to celebrate fall birthdays, Thanksgiving and (soon!) Christmas, my heart longs even harder to hear Dominic’s name.  

Of course I remember him-he’s my son-and of course others do too. 

But it is especially helpful this time of year to have friends and family speak of him aloud. 

Read the rest here: Let Me Know You Remember

Supporting Grieving Hearts This Thanksgiving


Thanksgiving is Thursday and I know many are making final plans and preparations to gather family and friends around the table.

In the rush toward celebration, please don’t forget those in your circle who have suffered loss.

The first Thanksgiving without your child is excruciating.

Even the second or third Thanksgiving with an empty chair is unbelievably hard.

Here are some helpful ideas to get you started. 

❤ Melanie

We are all on a journey through life and each carry some sort of load.  Mine is child loss.  Yours may be something else.

We can help one another if we try.  

Love and grace grease the wheels and make the load lighter.  

Here are ten ways to love a mourning heart at Thanksgiving:

Read the rest here: Ten Ways to Love a Mourning Heart at Thanksgiving

I Can Rest Securely in God’s Provision

The world can make a heart panic, scrambling to pile up extra lest “the worst” befalls us and suddenly there’s not enough.

That’s what happened a couple years ago when, for some unknown reason, toilet paper became the currency of security.

But no matter how deep or full the pantry, stuff can’t keep us truly safe.

Ask me how I know.

Read the rest here: Thanks And Giving

Embracing Lament: Finding Strength In Our Pain

When I first began writing in this space, “lament” had only just come into vogue.

Now, it’s everywhere.

If the past few years have taught hearts a single thing, I hope it is there’s no use pretending life doesn’t hurt sometimes. We were not created to carry that kind of pain alone.

And thankfully, we don’t have to.

God, in Christ, invites me to speak it, to sing it, to release it as an exhale so His grace and strength can rush in to fill that empty space.

You’re invited too.

❤ Melanie

Thanksgiving was always my favorite holiday.

I loved everything about it,

Read the rest here: The Power of Lament to Make Room for Thanksgiving

Children Grieve Too: Children’s Grief Awareness Day

Today is Children’s Grief Awareness Day.

I’m thankful a day is set aside to focus on children’s grief because it’s so easy for their grief to be overlooked, underrated and even dismissed.

Grown ups often tout the line, “Kids are resilient. They will adapt.“

And while it’s true that from the OUTSIDE it might look like a child is OK or even thriving, on the INSIDE she may be curled up into a ball or he may be angry and resentful.

Sometimes these feelings find unhealthy expression through addiction or risky behavior. Sometimes they simply grow into a giant overwhelming shadow that darkens the child’s whole world.

Image result for images child grief day

My own mother’s mama died suddenly from a stroke when she was only ten years old. Within days, Mama was whisked away from everyone and everything she knew to live with her oldest married sister.

No one understood then that children needed to grieve so Mama never really did.

At least not out loud where anyone could hear.

But that grief informed her entire life-it made her kinder to many people and made it harder for her to develop deep attachments to others. She was only able to talk about it in the last couple of years of her life when failing health, my own loss and many hours spent in hospital rooms together created safe spaces for her to share.

Children grieve whether we observe it or not.

Children need safe spaces to express that grief even when it hurts our hearts to hear the words or see the tears.

No child should have to wait until they are grown to acknowledge his pain or her brokenness.

Image result for images child grief day

Just like we parents, surviving siblings grieve what they’ve lost AND what will never be. Graduations, weddings, new babies, holidays, birthdays and other occasions mark their hearts too.

Children bear other burdens as well.

They are often targeted by those outside the grief circle for updates on the family while their own grief goes unnoticed. After five years, my kids have developed a standard answer to the question, “How’s your mom doing?”

“About as well as you’d expect.”

Next.

Sometimes children feel they must be extra good and extra quiet in an effort to make up for the sadness in a home after the death of a child. Sometimes they take on adult roles, shouldering responsibilities a depressed or grieving parent can’t manage right now. Sometimes they struggle with misplaced guilt when their hearts are jealous of all the attention focused on the missing child.

Often they just wish things were back to how they were before tragedy struck.

Your children may never tell you these things unless you ask.

And they may not confirm them even if you do.

But rest assured, they are grieving too.

Give them permission to do it out loud.

When Thanksgiving is Born of Sacrifice

Rocking babies I never dreamed that one day my life would look like this. 

I never imagined that one of those tiny bodies I held close to my mama heart would not outlive me.

Now I sit in the same rocking chair in the dark, thinking about how so many things I wouldn’t have written into my story are now part of it.  

And if I’m honest,  it can easily overwhelm my heart.  It can carry me to a place of despair and desperation where there’s no room for thanksgiving-not the holiday OR the feeling.  

Here we are-the eleventh year of holidays without Dominic-and I’m no better at it than I was at first. 

Read the rest here: Thanksgiving As Sacrifice

How Can I Make Space for Grief During the Holidays?

We are days away from plunging headfirst into the rough and tumble holiday season.  

Thanksgiving is coming fast and I don’t know about you, but it seems that once I eat the turkey and dressing, the clock moves faster and the days crowd one another in a race to Christmas and the end of the year.

So I want to take a minute to think about how important it is to make and maintain space for grief during this busy season.

Read the rest here: The Importance of Making Space for Grief During Holidays