First of all you are not alone. Many of us have lost loved ones during the holiday season. And sometimes it just doesn’t matter when you lost them, you miss them at Christmas. It’s ok to feel your loss as long as you don’t allow it to take you under. So how do we celebrate the people we miss without being overwhelmed with pain and drowning in our loss. How do we find the joy in the holiday season?
We become what we miss the most for another person.
You miss your grandmothers or your parents. Then become that spirit for another person. Use your talents to bless someone else and quiet as it’s kept, it will liberate you from your pain. You still may feel the heaviness in the mornings and the evenings, but while you give it lifts (at least for a time). And as you begin to taste these moments of life again, the best parts of you want more because we were meant for joy. I have spent Christmas after Christmas taking care of other people’s children. And that fact has been a saving grace during some of the most challenging times of my life: death of family members and death of a marriage.
There are three things that I do to reclaim not only my Christmas:
1). Redirecting myself so that I can focus my energy on something that will lift me up and not allow me wallow around depressed has saved my life (and I know I’m not the only one).
2). Realizing their life, instead of focusing on the pain of their death, has had me laughing even as the tears fall. When it’s all said and done I still have a life to live and the fact that I have loved someone that has come and gone is reason enough to live a life that matters because people will see the person I love in small ways through you.
3). Rejoicing at the best in them that has become a part of me and leaving the pain on the table is my constant way out. I have felt like a fat man trying to shed a hopeless amount of pounds: but, it seemed like the more I walked it out, heavy weight and all, the lighter I began to feel (day after day after day). The pain can be temporary, the heart beat of who the where in your life and who they are in your heart can be eternal. Rejoice in that and let the pain go.
I love you.
-MizJAI-
