Permission Granted: Navigating Grief and Gratitude at Christmas

December asks a lot of us. It wants joy, celebration, togetherness, and a cheerful spirit that sometimes feels impossible to muster. When you're carrying grief, the holidays can feel like walking a tightrope between honoring what you've lost and showing up for the people who are still here. Some days you'll lean toward gratitude. Some days grief will take up all the space. Most days, you'll feel both at once and wonder how that's even possible. It’s exhausting.

It is possible, though; and it's normal. But nobody tells you how to actually live in that tension.

I spent years trying to figure out how to hold Christmas and loss in the same hands. My husband died on Christmas Day, so the holiday became both a celebration and an anniversary. I wanted my girls to love Christmas, to associate it with magic and family, not with the worst day of our lives. I also needed space to grieve. Those two needs didn't always cooperate. And somewhere in the middle of trying to balance both, I started believing that feeling happy meant I was betraying him. That if I laughed too hard or enjoyed something too much, I was forgetting. I carried that guilt for years.

In those first years, I thought I had to be "on" all the time during the holidays. I believed that if I let my grief show, I would ruin Christmas for everyone else, so I pushed through. I smiled when I needed to cry. I stayed in the room when I needed to step out. I performed holiday cheer like it was a role I'd been assigned. And when the grief broke through anyway, I apologized. I excused myself to the bathroom and cried quietly so no one would see. I treated my own pain like an inconvenience.

I wish I'd known then that stepping away for five minutes doesn't ruin anything, it actually helps. When I finally gave myself permission to excuse myself, to sit in a quiet room and let my shoulders drop, I came back steadier. My daughter didn't need a perfect, cheerful mom. She needed a mom who was present, and sometimes being present meant taking a break so I didn't shatter.

Being present also meant showing up for the traditions that mattered, even when they hurt. I'm history-oriented. Traditions matter to me. Even when they were hard, I wanted to keep them. I know not everyone feels that way, and that's fine. Some people need to create entirely new traditions after a loss. For me, maintaining the old ones felt important. It anchored me. It reminded me that not everything had disappeared.

You can keep the tradition and also acknowledge that it's different now. You don't have to pretend it feels the same. You can modify things. You can light the candles and cry at the same time. You can bake the cookies and miss the person who used to steal the dough. Holding onto a tradition doesn't mean you're pretending everything is fine, it means you're finding a way to carry both the past and the present.

Sometimes other people help you do that, unprompted. Christmas Day was the day he died, but December 18th was the day of the accident that put him in a coma for a week. For years, my older daughter Kate texted me every December 18th. Robert was her step-dad, but it was just a simple check-in - she remembered. I think she wanted to keep that date separate from Christmas, to acknowledge what happened without collapsing it all into one overwhelming day.

At first, it almost made me mad. I didn't want to remember. I was running from the grief, trying to outpace it, and her text felt like someone grabbing my arm and forcing me to stop. But after a few years, it became a comfort. It was her way of saying, "I know. I remember. You're not carrying this alone." She did that on her own. I never asked her to. Maybe remembering was her way of coping. Maybe it helped her to acknowledge the day that changed everything. Either way, it mattered.

If you're trying to navigate grief and gratitude this season, here are some things that might actually help:

·         Let someone remember the hard dates with you, even if it irritates you at first. Their remembering might be their way of coping. Eventually, it might comfort you too.

·         Stop apologizing when grief hijacks you mid-moment. You don't need permission to feel what you're feeling. If you need five minutes in the bathroom to cry, take it. You're not ruining anything.

·         Modify traditions instead of forcing yourself through unchanged ones. Keep what anchors you. Let go of what drains you. You don't have to do it all exactly the same way. You're allowed to adjust.

·         Find one person you can be completely honest with. One person who won't flinch when you say the ugly stuff. You don't need to tell everyone what you need. Most people can't handle it. But one person who stands beside you - no matter what - makes all the difference.

·         Write it down when you need to get it out of your head. Journal the grief. Journal the gratitude. Both deserve space.

I won't tell you it gets easier. I will tell you it gets different. The grief doesn't disappear, but it shifts. It becomes something you carry instead of something that crushes you. And in that shift, there's room for gratitude to grow alongside it.

You're allowed to miss someone and still celebrate. You're allowed to grieve and still laugh. You're allowed to honor your loss and also appreciate what remains. Those things don't cancel each other out.

This season will ask a lot of you. Give yourself permission to meet it on your own terms. And when you find a moment of gratitude in the middle of the grief, let yourself feel it.

With grace for the mess,

~Stef