• Home
  • Services
    • Wordsmith Services
    • Client Success Stories
  • Publications
    • Wordsmith Publications
    • Publication Process
      • Independent Publication Process
      • Publication Planning Questions
    • Publication Tips & Techniques
      • Photoshop Tips
        • Create Pencil Art from Color Photo
      • Website Development
        • Useful HTML
        • HTML Editor
    • Independent Book Reviewers
    • SPECIAL SPOTLIGHT
      • Can we sing together again?
  • Legacy Documents
    • Legacy Documents (in General)
    • Legacy Letters
      • Overview of Legacy Letters
      • Wordsmith Associates – Legacy Letter Package
      • Legacy Letters Reading List
  • Word Fun
    • Collective Nouns
    • Disappearing Vowels
    • Words Most Missed
    • Funky Font Art
    • Good Word Places
      • LinkedIn Word Groups
      • Goodreads
  • About Us
    • About Us
    • Staffing
      • Staffing Model
      • Rod Mebane, Managing Editor
      • Donna Mebane, Author & Senior Associate
      • Angela Scaperlanda Buján, Senior Associate
  • Contact Us

Grief is something you learn to carry … especially through the holidays


It is a challenge to carry grief through the winter holidays

When I am asked how the grief caused by losing someone you love changes over time, I suggest that unfortunately the grief journey is not linear and there are no reliable mileposts to help guide you along the way. Grief is not something you get over or even through, as I’ve heard people say. In my experience, grief is something you learn to carry. It will always be with you in some form, and you will never be the same as you were before. However, there are times when grief may be a little softer than other times and, at some point, you are likely to experience joy again, though you might not recognize it at first.

The holidays can be the worst times. That pretty much goes without saying but, importantly, they are also the times when happiness may be lurking just around the corner. Any happiness will most likely be fleeting and less all-encompassing than it used to be, but I do believe that it’s there and that opportunities to let in the warmth of the holiday spirit will increase over time.

One indication of how grief has changed for me comes from reflecting on where I was a year ago, compared to now. Last year, it was the fourth Christmas without my youngest child, Emma. We had just gotten through the fourth Thanksgiving and what would have been Emma’s 23rd birthday. That’s when I wrote 6 Steps to Survive the Holiday Season after Loss that appeared in the Huffington Post.

As I’ve been asked by numerous people if they could reprint the article (and I say, Of course!), I decided to re-read it to see if I now think differently based on the “wisdom” and experience of another year. Here’s a review of the “6 steps” that I recommended:

  1. Don’t ask too much of yourself.
  2. Reshape traditions.
  3. Find ways to include the ones you have lost.
  4. Say her name. Tell stories about him.
  5. Take time for you.
  6. Allow yourself to be sad but also to experience joy.

In general – as we now work our way through the fifth holiday season without Emma – I find that the “6 steps” are still good reminders for me (and I hope others), and I wouldn’t feel compelled to modify much of anything. Even so, I do sense that I have changed. For example, I am longer tempted to ask too much of myself – I’ve learned that my steady state is slower now, and that’s okay.

Significance of Eating at the Dining Room Table

Probably the biggest change – at least symbolically – has to do with holiday traditions. Like many grieving families, we have been busy reshaping and reinventing traditions since Emma died, but this year we brought back a tradition that we had put on hold – we ate Thanksgiving dinner in the dining room. It may seem really simple and “no big deal,” but people who have experienced profound loss understand the situation. I honestly didn’t think we would ever have a family meal in the dining room again. I didn’t think we could bear the empty chair. But this year, as it turns out, there would two empty chairs: one for Emma and one for her sister, Sarah, who is off with a boyfriend having the adventure of a lifetime in Japan. So, I set both empty places at the Thanksgiving table and tried to pretend that both of my girls were off doing something wonderful, just out of my reach and my view.

For us it was the right time, and I’m glad we went back. But I was ready. You may not be. You’ll know when you are. Take baby steps when you can. Try not to stand still for too long. And, hopefully, you can open your heart enough to begin to rediscover pieces of joy this holiday season.

See Donna’s Other “Wisps of Hope”

SEEK TO FIND

AMAZON REVIEW OF ‘COMMON GOSPEL’

AMAZON REVIEW OF ‘COMMON GOSPEL’

First Amazon Review of 'The Common Gospel: The Ultimate Testament to Jesus the Messiah'

WORDSMITH ASSOCIATES NEWS

WRITINGS ON THE WALL

  • Words are like leaves and, where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
  • So is a word better than a gift. –Apocrypha
  • How many verses have I thrown into the fire because the one peculiar word, the wanted most, was irrecoverably lost. –Walter Savage Landor, Verses Why Burnt
  • Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled. –Horace, Epistles
  • A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. –John Steinbeck, “In Awe of Words”
  • The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work and that writing didn’t require any. –Russell Baker, Growing Up
  • The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence. –Paul Simon, The Sound of Silence
  • Light dies before thy uncreating word; Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall, and universal darkness buries all. –Alexander Pope, The Dunciad
  • Good words are worth much … and cost little. –George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
  • It is not of so much consequence what you say, as how you say it. Memorable sentences are memorable on account of some irradiating word. –Alexander Smith, “Dreamthorp,” On the Writing of Essays
  • Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictory word, preserves contact. It is silence which isolates. –Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
  • All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind. –Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
  • “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.” –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
  • Sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • And many a word, at random spoken, may soothe a wound or heart that’s broken. –Sir Walter Scott, Lord of the Isles
  • To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality. –Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Traité Elémentaire de Chimie
  • Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your action. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny. –Anonymous
  • Omit needless words. –William Strunk, Jr, The Elements of Style
  • My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts –never to heaven go. –Shakespeare, Hamlet
  • Choice word and measured phrase… above the reach of ordinary men. –William Wordsworth, Resolution and Independence
  • Life's like a movie. Write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. –Jim Henson, The Muppet Movie
  • The writer doesn’t want success ... The writer wants to leave a scratch on the wall of oblivion that someone a hundred or a thousand years later will see. Kilroy was here. –William Faulkner, Faulkner in the University
  • Honeyed words like bees, gilded and sticky, with a little sting. –Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Pretty Words
  • In the world of words, the imagination is one of the forces of nature. –Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous
  • Nature fits all her children with something to do, He who would write and can’t write, can surely review. –James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics
  • How long a time lies in one little word! Such is the breath of kings. –Shakespeare, King Richard II
  • The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it. –Ernest Hemingway, Paris Review
  • Word is a shadow of deed. –Democritus
  • I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long Words Bother me. –Alan Alexander Milne, Willie-the-Pooh
  • Prête-moi ta plume pour écrire un mot. Lend me your pen to write a word. –Au Clair de la Lune
  • Man’s word is God in man. –Alfred Lord Tennyson, “Idylls of the King,” The Coming of Arthur
  • In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. –The Common Gospel, “Eternal Word”
  • Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury, and remedying it. –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

CLICK HERE to see these writings on the wall in a larger size.

Printing in Perspective

Printing in Perspective
Your life is made up of two dates and a dash. Make the most of the dash.

Make the most of your life - your dash! - and share what you learn with others.

The kingdom of God does not come with observation ... for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you. -Jesus the Messiah. The Common Gospel ("Final Journey)

LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

LEARN ABOUT ‘LEGACY DOCUMENTS’

WORDS-OF-THE-DAY

AN AFFILIATED SERVICE

AN AFFILIATED SERVICE

Copyright © 2025 · Wordsmith.Associates · Log in