An authentic holiday season

If you’ve lost your person, existing in a season of joy, gratitude and holiday cheer often leads to feeling extra lonely, unseen and misunderstood.

Whether it’s your first holiday season or your tenth, I want to offer you two tips to help.

First, you don’t have to feel what other people are feeling. There is no requirement to feel any of it. Not joy. Not gratitude. Not one feeling is required.

Second, it’s okay to feel however you feel. If you feel sad, lonely, cheated, or filled with regret, that’s okay. And, if you do feel joyful, that’s also okay (and doesn’t mean that you didn’t love him enough).

There is no rulebook for life after loss, so you can’t possibly be doing it wrong.

Here’s a bonus tip: whatever you’re feeling, have the courage to feel it fully.

“Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is,” is a German proverb packed with truth.

When we fear difficult feelings, we attempt to numb or avoid them, and meanwhile those feelings grow.

Feelings need to be felt. In fact, they demand to be felt.

Feelings are a sensation in the body. They are neither forever nor fatal. Today, say to yourself, “Right now I am feeling ______, and that’s okay.”

Or “This is the part when I feel _____ and I know that it is temporary and won’t harm me.”

Wishing you an authentic holiday season – one in which you feel however you feel, and you have the courage to feel it fully.

And remember that you don’t have to do it alone, especially during the holidays. I took a DIY approach to my grief, and it took 6 years for me to find the tools that changed everything. I teach those tools in 6 months inside of Life Reconstructed, my coaching program exclusively for widowed people. Simply click below to begin.