Holiday Grief Survival Series: Times of Year When Grief Resurfaces
by Shawn Carney for Thin Veil Death Collaborative
The calendar doesn’t need to remind the body. Sometimes, grief arrives like weather: sudden, insistent, without warning. One minute you’re washing dishes or standing in line at the grocery store, and the next you’re ambushed by the scent of nutmeg or the sound of a song that used to fill the house. A season turns, a chill enters the air, and the ache returns before you’ve even named it.
Grief has its own almanac. Even when the loss feels integrated, when you’ve cried the tears, told the stories, built new rhythms, some part of you still tracks the light and air of the time when everything changed. The week your father died, the month you buried your friend, the last cuddle with your soul-pet, the heartbreaking moment of pregnancy loss, the first frost after the last goodbye. Our cells remember what the mind tries to file away.
For many of us, the approach of the holidays sharpens this awareness. The world turns toward festivity, toward glitter and gatherings, and suddenly we’re aware of the split between our inner and outer landscapes. The invitations feel heavy, the decorations too bright, the songs intrusive. We’re living in two calendars at once: the cultural one that insists on joy, and the personal one that carries the memory of what (and who) is missing.
This is one of the quieter violences of grief: the expectation to keep pace with a world that has not paused. But within that dissonance, there’s also a small doorway, an invitation to move differently through the season. What if, instead of trying to get through it, we allowed ourselves to honor the rhythms of our grief as a kind of wisdom?
Here are a few ways to begin:
Name the season inside you. Before the holidays unfold, take a few minutes to check in with your body. What sensations rise as the year ends? Where does your grief live today?
Build small rituals of remembrance. Light a candle each evening. Cook a dish your loved one loved. Set a place at the table or pour an extra cup of tea. These gestures tell the body: they are remembered.
Give your grief a shape. Write a letter, make something with your hands, create a small altar of photos and objects. Tangible acts help the intangible move.
Redefine participation. You can attend fewer events. Leave early. Say no. Choose connection that feels reciprocal, not performative. Your grief deserves pacing.
Grief doesn’t follow the calendar. It follows the pulse of love, memory, and time. When it resurfaces, it’s not regression. It’s a reminder: something sacred has been lost, and it mattered enough to still echo.
So when the next wave rises, uninvited, inconvenient, and full of ache, try to meet it the way you’d meet an old friend at the door. You don’t have to know what to say. Just make space for it to come in from the cold.
