The HoLiDaYs approach...

This morning, my daughter informed me that this is her least favorite time of year because the only thing to look forward to after Halloween is Thanksgiving and that’s “forever away.” I chuckled. For a kid, the holiday season does seem far off. For grown ups tasked with managing the next 8 weeks (of days off from school, meal planning, gift buying, charitable giving, travel, family dynamics, fill in the blank), the approaching holiday season can feel daunting at best.

This isn’t going to be one of those self-help, well-meaning, “do less, enjoy more” kind of blog posts. There are many of those, and I hope they’re helpful to you. This is more about when it’s hard to do less and enjoy more. This is about the anxiety that the holidays can bring up and the rush that these last two months can feel like. This is about how to make it through with a little of the joy that is demanded of us, if a lot of joy feels like a bridge too far.

I would love to say that I’m good at slowing down and reflecting during this season but that would be a lie. It is not my natural state to slow down; in fact, I want to fill every minute with JOY and MEMORIES and GRATITUDE. Most of us feel that way as the season ramps up, I think. There is a pressure mixed with the joy: to be happy, to do good, to see everyone. The approaching season feels like it wants us to end the year in utter exhaustion.

And maybe we will, despite our best efforts. But we can also choose to not get swallowed whole by stress and grief and anxiety. We can choose to view the shortening days and longer evenings as times to be still and quiet, alone or with others. We can be the light for each other in the simplest ways: shared meals, shared memories, shared time. We can view the holidays as a season to enjoy and reflect, rather than one to slog through with a plastered-on smile. For some of us, that might mean saying no more; for others it might be about saying yes, to invitations and yes, to “good” stress.

However you approach the march through the end of the year, I hope you can remember that it is only a season. It may be harder or easier than last year’s; it may be slower or longer than next year’s. However it happens or feels to you, it is temporary. I hope you find the joy in that; it’s what I’ll be trying to do.

Your grief in the dark, dreary days of winter

Listen, I am naturally an optimist. I really do see the silver lining the majority of the time. However. Here in Southeastern Pennsylvania, it has been dark and dreary and rainy for what feels like years (I also can be a little dramatic). When the weather is like this, it’s nearly impossible to remember that the days are actually getting longer; that soon we’ll spring forward; that winter actually does not last forever. Don’t get me wrong, all of those counter thoughts can be helpful. After all, nothing hard lasts forever!

That being said, this is a really difficult time for a lot of my clients.It’s especially difficult for those who are sick or old or grieving (or all three), isolated by those circumstances and the addition of bad weather. The usual self-care suggestions fall flat this time of year. Go outside! It’s disgusting out, no thank you. See friends! People can’t always drive in inclement weather. Or they don’t feel particularly social when they’ve been hanging on to a chest cold for a month. Exercise! Ugh. Don’t even get me started.

I don’t mean to say you should avoid all those things and hibernate for the winter. If you can find the energy and motivation to do that stuff, then you’re in better shape than me! Go forth on the journey. For the rest of us, let me just validate that it’s harder to do the usual self care stuff when the weather is bad, as it has been here. When it’s harder to make ourselves feel better, we can get caught in a shame cycle: “I should be doing X but I don’t feel like it, I’m useless/lazy/awful/whatever.” I’m here to tell you, you are not useless or lazy or whatever other horrid adjective you want to use to describe yourself. You are a normal person having a normal reaction to a very long and dreary time of year.

And if you are grieving, whether it’s the first year or the fifth or the fifteenth, you may find that your grief is heavier than usual. No matter how long it’s been, that is normal. Grief can be exacerbated by any number of things, including but not limited to post-holiday blues, gross winter weather, and increased isolation.

So if you are having a harder than usual time right now and all the usual coping skills are falling flat, I have good news: the days are getting longer. Soon we’re going to spring forward. Winter doesn’t last forever. And neither will this hard time. While it lasts, consider reaching out to someone—a friend, a therapist, some nice strangers on the internet—and let them share the burden. You don’t have to do this alone.