One of the most painful losses a person can experience is the death of their spouse. So, for those who are in that situation, you’re not weak. The intensity of the pain you feel is very real and runs profoundly deep. Some might say it feels like half of you has been violently ripped away, especially if the loss was sudden and unexpected. If you have young kids, your first thoughts are often for them, and are they going to be okay?
Interestingly, they often wonder the same thing about the parent who is still with them. All that being said, surviving and walking out the healing from such a close loss is made up of a lot of small, wise choices. Don’t be afraid of what others think if you choose to get counseling. People don’t understand a loss this profound unless they have walked here for themselves. Here are 7 tips for navigating the first year of holidays after losing your spouse.
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1. Be Kind to Yourself
The holidays seem to make the pain of loss intensify by multiple degrees. It’s like someone suddenly turned up the heat in an oven. It’s okay to choose to do less holiday-oriented activity than in the past. Letting some things go and maybe even delegating some things to family members if you find you don’t have the energy and you’re just not feeling well (either emotionally or physically) can reduce feeling overwhelmed. For example, there’s nothing wrong with choosing to decorate less or not at all. Psychology Today suggests “throwing guilt out the window” and letting go of any “idealized version” of the holidays.
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2. Order Out or Let Someone Else Cook
Some people put a great deal of effort into holiday meals and desserts. This is another activity that can be delegated. A choice can be made to order out, have food catered in, or maybe have a family-style potluck. Maybe this might be the time to pass the cooking along to a grown child or a grown niece or nephew if there are others in the family who enjoy holiday entertaining.
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3. Take Naps
Grief is exhausting. When you’re feeling like your energy level is low, it’s important to pay attention to that prompting. Grief often has a negative impact on the immune system, making a person more vulnerable to colds, the flu, and other ailments, according to UCLA Health. So, getting some extra sleep can help you remain healthy.
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4. Take Time to Exercise
At the same time, exercise is a healthy way to release negative emotions. The key to this is finding and picking a type of exercise that’s enjoyable. Maybe a walk with a friend, hiking, biking, swimming, dancing/country line dancing, Zumba, kickboxing. There are many options out there. Country line dancing and Zumba are options that can easily be found on YouTube, so they can even be done at home.
Negative emotions can also be released by praying, lighting a remembrance candle symbolizing your spouse, sharing a funny story about your spouse during a family gathering, and asking everyone who knew your spouse to share a funny story, according to Grief.com.
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5. Give Yourself Permission to Say “No” or to Change Your Mind
Part of self-care is giving yourself permission to say “no” when you just aren’t feeling like going to a holiday party. At the same time, sometimes it can seem like a good idea at the moment, and then you later realize that you just aren’t feeling up to going to a holiday celebration. There’s nothing wrong with setting the expectation that you may need to change your mind, even on the day of the event. Simply saying something like, “I’m not sure how I’ll be feeling on that day, but if I’m having a good day and not feeling emotionally overwhelmed, I might like to come.” There are good days and bad days that people experience with grief, according to Mayo Clinic. How a person feels from day to day, sometimes even from hour to hour, can change.
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6. Give Yourself Permission to Step Away or Even Leave Early
Being in a holiday setting can bring back memories—sometimes happy ones and sometimes sad ones. Either way, the memories themselves, or maybe certain smells or the sight of an empty chair where a spouse always sat, can seem to ambush your emotions, and you feel like bursting into tears. Give yourself permission to perhaps step into the bathroom to let your emotions settle or even politely leave for the day.
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7. Give Yourself Permission to Heal and Move on With Your Life
This isn’t something that a person will feel like doing right away. Maybe not even for a few years. However, taking one step at a time toward the healing process is healthy and one of the best gifts that can be given to children and other loved ones. Reaching out for grief counseling is an important part of the process, whether in a group therapy setting or one-on-one with a counselor. Grief diminishes slowly, and it’s not a linear process, but it does diminish.
There eventually comes a time when memories of that loved one make you smile and laugh rather than cry. It’s also important to give yourself permission to dream again about the future. Dreams cultivate hope, and hope helps cultivate healing. The more healing you experience, the more God can move through you to bring healing to others He brings across your path – a bit of beauty in the midst of the ashes.
If you have lost a loved one and would like assistance with navigating the holidays, please check out GriefShare.org, which is a national, Biblically-based organization. Grief Share also has a program called Surviving the Holidays, or Surviving the Holidays events. These will also be found at the Grief Share website noted above.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or text HOME to 741741.
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