Grief and Christmas -a double edge sword cutting even deeper during the pandemic holidays

Challenges and solutions for a Christmas on your terms, especially if you are a working parent

It is the season to be jolly, you might hear. The old traditional songs of gatherings and family hugs leave a sad taste in your soul — how can we celebrate Christmas when so much is shifting?

Traveling is again canceled or with significant risks.?

Even if you didn't lose someone dear, this second pandemic Christmas is cutting into the layers of social bonding that we all need to thrive.

Three reasons why Christmas was always a season of overwork?

Looking back on the years I was married with kids and work, Christmas time was already an exhausting race about making unforgettable memories and keeping traditions alive.

Traditions?can be nurturing, by giving you a feeling of familiarity, by telling you exactly what to do and when to do it. What to cook. Whom to invite. What kind of presents to get. What to do on Christmas Eve and whom to meet the days after.

But what Traditions don't tell you is that everyone has a different one. Even if you stay in your own country, same Appartement, same language, every family has their take on The Traditions. Entering a partnership can be particularly challenging in creating a common one.

I remember the first Christmases with my husband. He had a tradition, where his mom would decorate the tree in a closed room ( aka the Christkindl, the Jesus child was bringing the tree), and the kids would only enter with a WOW feeling after the decorating was done.?

In my family, we always decorate together with the classic hours spent on detangling Christmas lights, traditional Christmas music in the background, and the memories of each Christmas bulb.

The challenge was always creating a common one, where everyone had their little peace of Christmas Tradition integrated.

So with the traditions to keep, if you are a working parent, there were always 1000 more tasks you had to bring into your day. This might have looked like rushing from work to get last-minute presents and food. Or setting the decorations way "late" or "early"- definitely not on the first Sunday of Advent.

With the kids' excitement over the coming Holidays, the conversations around presents, expected and desired, hat to be made space for. Kids made wish lists, and you had to manage somehow to get those, pack them, hide them and create everything around them.?

More tasks meant more organization and communication. Either with your partner or with all the people helping you out.?

Sensory overload and emotional exhaustion?

The lights, the sounds, the smells. If you were exhausted and rushing from work to get home, all the extra sensory elements left you craving silence and detachment. Being overwhelmed and distracted could lead to you causing more accidents. Add the snow in the northern hemisphere, and you had a boiling pot of stress elements to manage.

Additionally, having young kids under three years old, who are impossible to control and fit into the church schedule, you had to juggle their needs somehow too. That is if you managed to get some sleep in. With young kids, the interrupted sleep every night made recovery an unicorn.

Family conflicts

Gathering everyone at the table, at the same time, eating the same things could be a bonding opportunity. IF everyone likes that, that is.

As a traditional time where family comes first, Christmas is when your needs are cut short. Your needs for sleep, silence, and your kind of food.

Multigenerational gatherings, especially if you are a parent and in the middle layer of them, can go from a warm feeling of coziness to an exploded emotional bomb with so much as a sigh.?

Studies show that life satisfaction is at its lowest for middle age humans with kids. And I am sure Christmas adds to that. If you had your parents and your kids at your house, you know how hard it is to navigate needs, especially if you wanted to break some generational education methods that were not made in the mindful parenting era.

Christmas while dealing with Grief AND a Pandemic — a new dimension of overwhelm

Now everything you know has become 1000 times harder because old coping strategies don't work.

Planning?— a beloved strategy to tackle additional tasks- has become almost impossible with new Corona Virus variants every few months, school quarantines with no heads up. Everything is short-lived — you constantly need to adjust.?

Selling on your family for support used to work when everyone could travel and prepare. With grandmothers and grandfathers not taking the big flights over the Atlantic to see their grandkids and help out, an extensive support system falls away for parents. Especially ex-pat parents, with no family around, are now even more isolated.

Relying on your community for support?is also on thin ice because everyone is struggling. Some more, some less, but even the couples with no kids who may be used to visiting and taking on godparents roles need their time off and away. When everyone is struggling, who is there to help?

Reading this list of added tasks, you might already feel like it's enough. The glass is full. You pray God/ The Universe doesn't add to this. But then it does.?

You lose a loved one. If you lost your partner or someone dear and near before the pandemic, you were already running low on energy and close support. If you lost them during this time of special rules about visitations and overwhelmed medical system, you might struggle with added guilt and PTSD around how your loved one had to pass.?

Grief is physically hurting you.?When you grieve during Christmas time, you might feel like a split personality. A part of you questioning the meaning of all this, missing the loved one. Another part of you wanting to live life to the fullest because you don't know what's around the corner.

In this confusion and pressure to be jolly, you might not recognize yourself and crave peace and quiet, crave it all to "get back to normal." But it won't.

Nothing will ever be the same. And like with grieving, too, the second year is a lot of times the hardest. Because now you see the permanency of the new reality. The second year takes hope away, that time can heal all wounds. The second-year is the one where everyone goes back to being busy with their own life, while your soul still hast to say goodbye to memories of what could have been.

WHAT CAN WE DO??

Now I know my way around grief.?

The first Christmas after my husband passed, I bought my daughter 3 (!) play castles. I was overwhelmed with decisions already (decision fatigue?is scientifically proven to be something you can only recover from when you take time off). Still, I couldn't escape my role of being the sole decision-maker now. Besides, with their father missing, Christmas became a traumatizing sad day.?

Because the emphasis is on the family on Christmas, we acutely miss it when it's not around.?

What to NOT DO:?Hallmark movies, Instagram family photos, and Pinterest Decorations boards are hard to look at. Even if it's often an impossible standard to achieve, you feel like you and your kids are missing on that.

Don't spend too much on cleaning on wrapping presents. Santa doesn't care if there is dust behind the curtains.?

Don't start organizing or decluttering spaces — it just adds up to decision fatigue. Don't over- and micro plan.?

Don't try to push through feelings and shut everything down. I know you might be scared that once you open up the door to crying and breaking down, you might not be able to shut it back and function. But crying releases endorphins — you will always feel better afterward.

What TO DO:?Studies on memory show that we only remember highlights. What few highlights can we focus on? What are a few highlights in our control? Choose?ONE Highlight for every family member?during the two-week vacation and let the rest soon be forgotten.?

Cut out long traditional foods cooking that required many family members to work on.?Choose ONE food?( for me, that will be Sarmale, sour crout wrappings with a secret meat filling) to cook and let the rest be convenient food. If you have finances,?order food from small business?or people in Facebook groups that might be similar to what you know.

Take time out alone. You need time alone.?

Go outside one time per day —?it doesn't have to be hour-long skiing or winter wonderland hiking. Every time you go outside matters. If you are a parent with small kids, even in front of the house matters.

Allow media time to be connection time?— look at what your kids are playing, play their online games, look at movies together and talk about how dealing with complex emotions is depicted there.?

Talk to therapists, listen to podcasts about mental health and take advantage of free coaching calls?( I offer one as well — find me on IG?https://www.instagram.com/elitecoaching.ch/?hl=en?

or FB in the Group Thriving working parents?https://www.facebook.com/groups/215864230018920).

Even this Christmas will pass. Gift yourself the gift of compassion — genuine compassion and understanding towards your coping. You are doing the best you can in a sea of responsibilities.?

With grief and Christmas, there is this new reality of holding two truths at the same time. You can be jolly AND deeply sad at the same time. You can be grieving AND laughing around the Christmas tree.?