Here are some tips from grief counselor Darcie Sims on how to ease feelings of grief during the holidays:
– Be guided by your needs, not anyone else`s, and let those needs be known to your family and friends.
– Let family and friends know whether you are comfortable talking openly about your loved one.
– Decide whether you want to stay home for the holidays or go out of town. You may even want to go to an entirely different holiday environment this year.
– Decide whether you want to retain responsibility for family get-togethers, dinners or parties. This may be a time for someone else to take over those tasks.
– Consider your greeting card, baking and decorating traditions and re-evaluate whether you really enjoy those things. Would the holidays be the same without those traditions?
– Make some changes. Have holiday dinner at a different time or place. Open gifts on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning (or vice versa).
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– Go shopping on your ”good” days. Take a friend along and shop when stores are least busy. Or shop by phone or from catalogs.
– Skip stockings if you aren`t up to it. Or hang them all and put thoughts and feelings about the loved one on notes and put them in that special stocking; this is a particularly good way for children to express their feelings.
– Don`t send cards if it`s too difficult. Or enclose the funeral service card inside the greeting card. Or wait till New Year`s and send a photocopied letter to your friends, explaining what happened.
– Give a gift in memory of your loved one. Or donate money you would have spent on a gift for the loved one to a charity.
– If your loved one is a child, go buy a toy as you would for the child, wrap it, then give it to a holiday charity.