This taboo topic is one that often gets swept under the rug in the spirit of not wanting to "bring other people down" or "be a buzz kill" during what is considered a festive time of year. Let's talk about grief, overwhelm, seasonal sadness, why it's ok and what to do for yourself and those you love. 

In this episode, we dive into the often-hidden emotional struggles that come up during the holidays. While the world around us celebrates, many feel the sting of loss and the weight overwhelm, anxiety or hard times. Whether you’re navigating personal grief or feeling an inexplicable heaviness, this conversation offers insights and tools to find peace and honor your feelings in a season that can feel anything but Merry and Bright.

Listen in for a compassionate guide to navigating grief, anxiety and hard times while  finding moments of light during the season of connection and reflection.

Takeaways:

• Honor Your Grief: the holiday season can intensify emotions in ourselves and those we care about. Normalize, listen, offer grace.
• Navigate Seasonal Sadness: Tools for managing the “holiday blues” and recognizing what triggers them.
• Find Healing Rituals: Simple practices to feel connected and grounded.
• Compassion in Action: practice self-compassion, honor emotions, and support others dealing with loss, anxiety and sadness.
• Practical tips: Creating a supportive inner circle, connecting to healthy resources, what to say during the holidays.
• Embrace Moments of Light: Tips to welcome joy, even in the shadows of grief.
• Get the FREE “Anchor for Peace” meditation designed to ease the heaviness of hard times. 

 💜Link for companion guided meditation
“Meditation for Anxiety in Times of Stress, Chaos or Grief”https://www.joyfulmedium.com/free-guided-meditation-anxiety

https://www.joyfulmedium.com/lightGet your FREE download and working with Archangel Sandalphon now!
Click Here: https://www.joyfulmedium.com/light

Get Joy's Free "Sign Magnet" 3 Day Mini Course HEREhttps://www.joyfulmedium.com/sign-magnet
Joy's Website: www.joyfulmedium.com
Instagram: @JoyfulMedium
TikTok: @JoyfulMedium
Facebook: @JoyfulMedium
Facebook Group: Joy's Soul Spa
YouTube: Psychic Medium Joy Giovanni

Episode Transcript:

Hey, beautiful soul, welcome to Spirit Speakeasy. I'm Joy Giovanni, Joyful Medium. I'm a working psychic medium, energy healer and spiritual gifts mentor.
This podcast is like a seat at the table in a secret club, but with mediums, mystics and the spiritual luminaries of our time. So come behind the velvet ropes with me and see inside my world as I chat insider style with profoundly gifted souls, we go deep, share juicy stories, laugh a lot, and it wouldn't be a speakeasy without great insider secrets and tips. You might even learn that you have some gifts of your own so step inside the spirit speakeasy.
Hey, beautiful soul, welcome back,
or welcome in for another episode of spirit speakeasy. I'm so happy to have you here with me today. Thank you for being a new listener or being a returning listener or, I guess, watcher, depending how you're getting this episode. In today's episode, I want to talk about grief and seasonal sadness, the shadow side to the season of light. And I've actually designed a companion meditation for this episode, which you can get in the show notes. The working title of the companion meditation is anchor for peace, a meditation for hard times. That name might change, but I'll be posting the link on social media. I will be posting the link in the show notes. So wherever you're watching or listening to this episode, make sure you check the show notes to get that free meditation. I have tried to record this episode several times this week, the day I'm recording this is actually November 9, which is the Saturday following the US presidential election announcement. So it's been a crazy week, and I'm sitting down to write this, and I really just want to say that I'm so thankful to have community, and I'm so thankful that something I've been doing in this past couple years, but really focused in this last year, is really tightening my friend circle, really finding some people readers or people Who are giving positive messages that I like to listen to, whether on YouTube or podcasts, actually have lists on each of who I listen to, but as the temperature really heats up, so to speak, or things become even tighter in the energy, I just want to make a suggestion to each of you to be really just understanding who your friends are, who you want to prioritize, as far as like friends and loved ones. It doesn't mean we have to cut other people out, if that's not how you're feeling, but it does mean getting really clear with ourselves about, you know, who that inner circle is for us now, and what positive sources of whether it's inspiration or understanding of a topic that you want to be anchoring in to listen to. So whether it's me or someone else, just make sure you've got that little list for yourself. I'm going to just dive right in. There were some other things I was gonna say. I know it's been a couple weeks since you and I chatted, and I do have a lot of exciting things coming up for the rest of the year. And as part of this, and as part of wanting to support you through the energy, not only do I have this meditation that's gonna come along with this episode, not during the episode, because, you know, meditation and podcast doesn't always seamlessly work together. But I also will have additional things coming out for you this month. So around Thanksgiving, if you are on my or whatever word we're going to use instead of Thanksgiving now, that day of the year where we are grateful. I'll just say it that way, probably that day, or maybe even a couple days before, I'm going to be sending out a special meditation as a gift, a holiday gift, to all of you. So if you're not already on my email list, just make sure you get on it. You can go right to my website, joyful medium.com, and on the home page there is another free gift, a free sign mini course called sign magnet. I'm going to be sending that out to the list as well, but if you want to get it now, you can just hop on my website. It'll give you the mini course, and then it also puts you on the list to get links to all the monthly free community healings, for example, which we just had one last week. If you missed it, there's another one in December, it lets you get to there's actually a really exciting workshop that I haven't announced yet that's going to be coming in January, that I'm going to start talking about very soon, but I'm just finishing up the info page about it, but there's going to be a workshop. And all of you who are here with me. Get a special limited code to get that for free. It's not going to be free for everybody, but if you're a listener here, if you're in my spirit circle, if you're in my inner circle here, in the pod squad, I'm going to share a code with you guys when I announce it. So I've got some things coming. So even if you're feeling overwhelmed or however you're feeling, I think we're all in lots of different emotions. So however you're feeling, I got some stuff for you coming for the rest of 2024 and into 2025 and like I said, between the blue light episode updates and predictions and forecasts and we'll have some Astro forecast. I've got the numerology year forecast just around the corner. I'm going to do a reading for the first six months of the year in the energy so we've got a lot of fun predictive type episodes coming up. But I feel like it's so important to talk about this taboo topic that often gets swept under the rug in the spirit of not wanting to, like, quote, unquote, bring other people down, or be that downer, or be a buzzkill to other people during what is often considered like such a festive time of year, going into later November, December, January, right, whether you whatever holidays you're celebrating, including the New Year and then the Lunar New Year. So sometimes we just don't talk about this during this time of year at all, but we are going to talk about grief, seasonal sadness, why it's okay, and what to do for yourself and those you love. Plus, like I said, I am going to link a special meditation designed just for this topic, meditation for hard times, so grief and seasonal sadness, the shadow side of the season of light. I want to open with just a little bit of a story and a quote that a client recently, recently shared. Most of you know that I'm a working medium, which means that I do readings for people. If you're watching the video version of this today, I'm recording in my formal like my office proper, not my home office. So I still see clients for readings, and recently, I was working with a client who lost their partner. I read for them very soon after the passing. I never know how recently someone has passed when I'm reading for my client, unless the spirit person chooses to share how recent their passing is. So I met with this person once. We did a reading, and then we did a group reading with some additional family members that wanted to hear from their newly departed loved one. And in the second time that I met with this person, they came a little early for the group reading, and we were chatting, and they said they had decided to start working with a therapist, which those of you that know me know I always recommend if you feel like that's something that you are able to do, especially when you're going through something or just needing some additional support, I think it's very valuable. And they were telling me, yeah. And in working with this therapist, I realized that I'm so deeply in grief because it's a direct like, directly proportional to how much love we had in this relationship, how much I loved this person, how much I truly opened my heart to them. And they said, You know, I finally, finally clicked in and I realized that this deep grief I'm feeling really is evidence of on the other side of that spectrum of the depth and like profound love that we share. So I thought that was really beautiful. I actually was like, this has to be a quote. So I looked it up. The exact quote is, life is full of grief to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people. The quote is attributed to someone named Orson Scott Card, and it appears in his book, Shadow of the giant. Haven't read the book, but I just, I thought that was a really beautiful story. It's sometimes the part of grief that we don't think about. And I want to just make it clear that I'm not only talking about grief or stress or anxiety or sadness as it relates to the loss of a loved one, to the spirit world, this can also be
grief for the loss of any kind of relationship, even if the person is still here in the physical world. It could be grief of the loss of a job, a career, an opportunity, a home. It could be grief about, you know, now, knowing where we are on the timeline in history. It can be grief about things that are happening politically in your country. It could be grief about wars going on in our world. It could be anxiety of the future. It could be uncertainty. It can be any anything. It's just as it relates to you in this moment in time. But just to really take a moment and think about. Whatever it is this season for you that you're finding heavy and understanding that the amount of grief that you're feeling is exactly to the degree that you allowed yourself to love. I just think it's a really beautiful sentiment, and like we've talked about, we've talked about examples of taboo grief on other episodes, right, and how we just don't talk about all the types of grief and the feelings we have associated them with them, but we haven't spoken about grief and sadness during a time associated with light and joy. So many people fear being like a quote, unquote buzzkill, like I was saying, or a downer, that they suppress these feelings or avoid expressing them, and what it's doing, in turn, is creating this emotional disconnect, because the the person that's sad or grieving is not being honest and vulnerable and sharing, even if they don't want to share. What it's all about sharing. Hey, you know what? I just am not in the most festive place. I want to come anyway, but I just want to give you a heads up and still going right. I feel like we need to or we have an opportunity to start normalizing that it's so common to be feeling grief or sadness or anxiety or overwhelm. It's just that often these feelings go unspoken, but it doesn't mean they're not there. I mean, how many of us grew up in situations or even time periods where things were like really swept under the rug or pushed into a closet, and it doesn't it doesn't make that thing not in that closet, just because we're not going to look at it, right? So just normalizing with our own communities, with our own like I was saying those safe space, inner circle groups that you have, and doing a check on everybody where how's your How are it's not just how are you feeling, because especially in North American cultures, US and Canada and probably lots of other cultures as well. We kind of know that the expected response to that question is fine, right? How are you I'm fine. It's not even, to be quite honest, we all know it's often not even someone really actually asking, How are you feeling? It's just, we know it's a polite thing to say, it's a greeting, whatever. But can you intentionally be normalizing this and checking in on this, even in your own family, your own community, your own friend group, and I'm aware that there's division in families, so it's why I keep offering so many options of this. Because maybe right now for you, it's not your family. Maybe it is, and I hope that for you, and I hope that for all of us, but maybe, you know for some of us, I know it's not so, where can you be normalizing this? Where can you be checking on people, and if it's you, if you're the one in grief, um, can you start giving yourself permission to not suppress these feelings, to not allow it to create emotional disconnect doesn't mean you have to reveal your feelings to everybody out in the world, if that's not where you are, but you can allow yourself to be connected with people you feel safe with, with people that actually care about you. Right the season of light in a cultural context, we really have this expectation of joy. You know what's funny, I've only recently, in the last half of years, started using my name as the adjective version. I never liked to say my name in any way before. But we do have this expectation of joy, right? There's this cultural pressure to feel happy and grateful. Yet not everyone experiences this, and not every year does everyone experience this? Maybe you've had a recent loss, maybe you're reeling from recent events and happenings, um, why is there this cultural pressure to feel happy and grateful and connected? Right? This leads to even more disconnect, even more dissonance, even more feeling other or feeling separate or feeling the need to withdraw and separate ourselves. Really, there's this big contrast to this season of light, when everything is decorated and music is playing and people are, well, some people are chipper, not everybody. But you know that, like I said, there's this cultural expectation that you're going to show up with joy, that you're going to hide your feelings, and you're going to put on the good face, and you're going to do the activities, and you're not going to bring anybody else down. But what about the shadow side of this has the nights grow longer in some parts of the world, this natural transition may even deepen feelings of loss or sadness or grief, because in actuality, yes, while we celebrate the light in this season of light, we get less of it. That's just the truth. In San Diego, it is already. We just did the time. Change a little over. Well, almost two weeks ago, almost a week ago, I don't know recently. My concept of time is a lot right now, guys, but we started getting dark at five. It's already dark. Where I grew up, in Boston and the greater Boston areas, I can remember times it getting dark at like 4pm it already being dark, whatever time those talk shows after school used to come on, I'd be falling asleep in high school, if I wasn't in a sport because I couldn't stay awake, it'd be getting dark even sometimes before 4pm so just being aware for yourself and others that the actual darkness that we experience, particularly in places where we do the time change still, which is us, parts of Europe, Canada still changes time. Not everyone does, and we'll see if we always do. But for now, just acknowledging that this transition of actually less light really can deepen these feelings of loss or sadness or grief. I don't know about you. Let me know in the comments, wherever you're watching or listening to this. But for me personally, once it starts to get dark and I whether I get home or whether I'm, you know, turning off my appointments for the day, I want to put on comfortable clothes, and that's it. When it's dark outside, I want to be done for the day. If it's light, something in me feels like, oh, I maybe I could still get some work done. I still want to do things. But even when we're feeling okay, it can make us feel like the steam is taken out of us, right? The emotional weight that this time can carry for those experiencing loss, it is huge, the gravity of it, even years after their loved ones have passed away, even years after that divorce or breakdown of a relationship, even years after loss of that business or career, right, those emotions can still carry extra weight. So, you know, maybe there are some solutions you can do, as far as turning on lights in your house or or but, you know, it is what it is, and we have to just acknowledge some of it and accept some of it and make sure we're checking in. And I want to talk a little bit about how we can understand grief and seasonal sadness. Grief has so many faces like we were talking about, it's not limited to physical death. People can grieve the loss of even just health or a layer of health. I was just working with someone recently who had an amputation done due to health reasons. So that's a huge grieving process and a perceived loss of its own right. People can grieve lost relationships, even unmet expectations, missed opportunities. We can even grieve previous versions of ourself and certainly previous versions of our lives, meaning, what did our life look like a couple years ago or 10 years ago, or, you know, it's why we hear people talking about their glory days. Reminds me of that. I guess I'm talking more to people who grew up in the 80s and 90s, or maybe even 70s, but that Al Bundy, oh, high school football career highlights of my lifetime, we can feel grief over many different things. It's really just such a hard thing to pinpoint, because it's not linear. Grief can rise up at different times. It can come on unexpectedly. It can be triggered by something so simple, it could be triggered by something that we don't even really know what's triggering it. So just having extra compassion for ourselves and others and like I was saying, there is also seasonal sadness, which is clinically known as seasonal affective disorder. Many years ago, there used to be kind of a joke when people would say, like, it's not a real thing. I actually was diagnosed with this in high school. There's not a lot of treatment really for it, but often it intertwines with grief. So if we've got this grief or sadness or something
heavy, that sometimes this darkness or the lack of light that we have can really exacerbate feelings of grief, but also just feelings of melancholy, of blah, of I don't want to do it. I'm done and especially with the climate that we've all been in right now, in whatever country you're in, particularly the US and Canada, there's there's just been a lot, but other countries have war and upheaval and poverty as well, and having less light doesn't really help that now, does it? So why, besides just the actual level of light in our world at this time, why does grief or anxiety or. Overwhelm feel stronger during the holidays. The absence of loved ones is, of course, amplified when these traditions and celebrations don't physically include them anymore, meaning they're not showing up at our holiday table or celebration, it can really just amplify the awareness of their absence. Also unresolved grief or ongoing sadness can resurface when we're reminded what's lost or what we no longer have. Can also lead to isolation and shame, which then just makes that problem even more when we're isolated and on our own and feeling all alone with these thoughts and feelings shame often accompanies grief. People feel as though they shouldn't be sad when everyone else is happy, which leads to even more isolation, right? If you're someone who's struggling, and everyone is joyous and at the celebration, and you've been invited and you are gonna go, and you're like, man, maybe I, maybe I shouldn't, maybe I just need to hide myself away. So shame often accompanies grief. And really, isolation is such a problem. And depending where you live, it can be even more so if you're affected by lots of weather. And you know, maybe you get snowed in, for example, and you can't get out. But by suppressing feelings, we're further disconnecting ourselves from any community we do have the beauty of the internet, and sometimes that's what we can muster. And like I was saying at the top, if you can make sure that you have some safe places or some community places that you know that you're going to get trustworthy information someone that actually cares about you, not so much inflammation and doom and gloom, right? We don't. We don't need that when we're already feeling really terrible. And I want to just highlight that it's okay to feel grief. I know part of our human nature is to want to avoid discomfort, avoid uncomfortable feelings ourselves and those of others. So it can be really hard to be with someone when they're grieving, to sit with them, to look at them, even if we're not saying anything, can feel hard to have the words to say, and it definitely feels hard to be that person who's grieving or overwhelmed or anxious or sad, or all of those and more tied together, right? It's okay to feel grief and sadness, even when society tells us it's a time to be joyful, it's okay to create space for your emotions, meaning it's okay to say no to events and parties. It's okay to go as you are, and just let some people know that's how you're gonna be. It's okay to create space in whatever ways work for you, but just be aware of how much you might be isolating, right? We just want to be careful that we're not isolating ourselves so much that the grief or sadness or anxiety becomes so overwhelming that we feel like we can't reach out. We do need to honor emotions, though, without judgment, and that means for ourselves and for others. So be really if you can sensitive to those around you and honor their emotions without judgment as well as your own. This is part of being human. It's messy and it's really uncomfortable a lot of the times, and it's okay to emphasize the importance of everyone around you giving themselves permission to feel their feelings, or to grieve or to breathe through the anxiety and overwhelm. There's this pressure of positivity, like I was saying, you know, there's pressure to be joyful. It's It's time. Society is telling you act right and be good and show up to these things how you should, there's this incredible pressure of positivity, and I've really been struggling with this. This last week, to be honest, I've talked to the people closest to me about it. There is this desire, I guess, or maybe this cultural mask that we put on of toxic positivity, right? We've all heard maybe that buzz word, toxic positivity, culture that insists on always looking on the bright side. And yeah, there are some of us that tend to lean towards the positive and want to find something positive to say, or a positive light in the distance, maybe for ourselves, but to just ask ourselves or anyone else, to put on a happy face and bypass actual feelings by just finding a sunny side of it that's not real. It's not helpful. It's not compassion. In it, and it's not the way to be with other human beings, or definitely not with yourself. It's it's a harsh way to be to just demand imaginary positivity when it doesn't exist. It's okay to acknowledge that light and darkness coexist in our world all the time, right? One doesn't cancel the other out. So just because we can put fake sunshine all over something doesn't mean that the sadness or the shadow side that difficulty is not there. It's doesn't cancel it out, it's still there. So then what do we do? How do we support ourselves? I think one important thing to understand is this idea of mindfulness and self compassion. You can do mindful practices like meditation or journaling or even just quiet reflection and contemplation. Maybe you take a walk, particularly on like the actual dates of holidays themselves, even though there might be traffic to and from wherever you're going, on main roads, I have found that like parks and beaches and lakes and dog parks even tend to be much slower on those days. So if you can get out into nature, if you're in a place where it's the weather allows that that could be a really nice time to just reflect or contemplate or process emotions. But even if you're doing it cozied up on your chair at home, really just allowing yourself those mindfulness practices. And if you're feeling overwhelmed, sometimes mindfulness can be just tuning into your breath and letting yourself not change your breath or control it, but pay attention to just that inhale and exhale and being fully present in a very, very focused way on a very micro action like breathing. You don't even have to be doing anything. You just have to breathe and listen to yourself breathing. Really, it's important to be gentle with yourself. Grief and sadness aren't things to fix, right, but rather to sit with and to acknowledge. Grief is something that we carry with us. It's not something we can put on a shelf and leave behind. Sometimes it rises to our awareness more than other times, it might be this moment you feel fine, and later, when you're putting your shoes on to go to that thing, you don't feel fine, and it's okay to be honest with yourself and acknowledge those things and challenge yourself when it feels safe to be honest with others and let them know. I'm sure people would rather know, hey, you know what? I got all ready, and I was thinking of coming, but I just can't hold conversation with a bunch of strangers today. My grief is feeling really tough, and I bet you that that person would rather know that than just think you're canceling sick and flaking out at the last minute, even if you don't want to talk about it, you could say don't really want to talk about it, but I just want you to know this is what's happening for me. And if it's people that you already feel safe with and know that love you and have your best interest, maybe you can find a way to do that and not need to fix yourself, but accept where you're at. It's okay to set boundaries with celebrations. It's okay to opt out of certain events entirely or modify your participation. Meaning, maybe you know that
on the day after one of the holidays, your people get together and play board games and have a festive time and snacks and all the things. And maybe you feel like I really want to go to that because I really want to see those people, but I don't want to play the games. I really don't want to participate in trying to be happy and argue with this person you know, who I know likes to cheat and win or whatever it is. And you can modify your participation and just let the host know, like, hey, I really want to be with you guys. I love you, and I It really means a lot to me to be invited into this group, but I'm just not up to playing the games. Would it be? Would it be okay with you? Or I just want to let you know I'm not going to play the games. I'm happy to either leave a little early at that time, or maybe I can just be the one refilling everyone's drinks and snacks and just watch and not actually play. And I'll take breaks outside and get a breather when I need to really just allowing yourself, and if you need help trying to modify events that you have to go to, this is again, where you can lean into that inner circle that you have, or if you don't have an inner circle, it's also okay to find a coach. I know that there are a lot of jokes out there about life coaches and energy coaches and intuitive coaches and all of that, but sometimes having an outside perspective of someone that has some training in the energetics of things, or even find a therapist, if that's within your means, that can help you in advance to think of some of these things to say, or to think of modifications for some of these events, so that. If you do need to pull it out at the last minute, you're not scrambling or scared or feeling like, Oh, I'm just not going to answer my phone because I don't know what to say. It's okay to prioritize your mental and emotional well being over things that you feel obligated to do, whether it's a seasonal way or whatever, a birthday, a celebration, an ask of someone else. And sometimes we need to start prioritizing that emotional and mental well being in advance, right? Like thinking in advance? Okay? I know these things are coming up. What are a list of things I could say? What are some modifications that might feel good to me? Maybe it's a you bring a change of clothes with you, and if you and if you want to put on pajamas, you can whatever works for you. And if you need someone to bounce it off of that's okay too, and it's okay to get together with your friends that you do trust and share some practical strategies on how each of you plans to gently say no or limit exposure to gatherings that feel overwhelming. It's also a great idea to start creating some rituals for healing. You could develop a new tradition. I know we had an episode all about this last year, developing new traditions that honor your loved ones that have crossed over, or incorporating the honoring of them into existing celebrations or habits or traditions that you have to honor a loved one, or to honor the grief or the memory that you feel of that loved one. It could even be to honor a past version of yourself, if it's that you let it go of a business or a career opportunity, or had a different type of loss or letting go of the way that you understood your community or society to work in the past and creating some new traditions that honor who you are and who you want to be. This could be as simple as lighting a candle or setting aside time for reflection or visiting a meaningful place, even online. Maybe you, for example, if you've lost a loved one, maybe you took a tour of a European city with them, and you can go online and watch an online version of it if you can't physically get there. But what little gestures, what little traditions can you create for yourself, with yourself that feel meaningful to you, whether it's about incorporating some one you've lost, or about incorporating the truth of who you are, these little traditions and rituals, even if we don't share them with other people. Can be so so powerful, right? And I want to talk a little bit about reframing the season, not as an expectation of happiness, but as a time for personal healing and growth. We culturally and societally, like I was saying, often think of this like festive season of light and the obligations of shopping and events and doing things and going to things. And we set our expectations for happiness for ourselves and other people pretty high, usually. But what if you decided you were going to reframe it for yourself, and instead of all of that that I just mentioned, you are going to focus on the closing of the year and the beginning of the next year as a time for personal healing and growth. How might you reprioritize your time? Maybe there's some books that you want to read when things get a little quieter. Maybe there's a spa day that you've been itching to have that's part of self care. Maybe it is finally finding that therapist or coach or practitioner that is going to help usher you through this period. Maybe it's buying yourself a really pretty journal from the dollar store, whatever it is for you, and even if you don't reframe the whole season, can you reframe little bits of it, or, better yet, reclaim them for yourself, for your own healing and growth. As you reflect on this year and set yourself up for the energy of the next year, I really feel like it's so important to find ways to support yourself, and it's okay to tell other people how they can support you as well, particularly if you're in grief over the loss of a loved one. So many people don't know what to do or say or how to contribute or how to support or how to help. So it's okay to if you know. If you don't know, it's not your obligation, but if you do know, hey, this is how I could feel supported. Share it. Tell people that are close to you, that safe inner circle, those closest friends, and it's also okay to tell them if they're doing something that does not feel supportive or helpful. So how do we support others? Maybe you're someone who is feeling a lot of privilege right now and not feeling a ton of grief, and maybe you haven't. Someone that you're feeling really strongly impacted by in this moment, maybe you have then you just want to support others as part of this time of year, be a safe space for those who are grieving. It's important to let people express their feelings without trying to fix them or offer empty platitudes. Please don't tell anyone that their loved one is in a better place. Now, it's just not helpful. I hear it over and over again from clients active listening, however, can be much more powerful than offering solutions. Just be present. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes it's enough to ask them if there's anything they've been wanting to share with someone, or any feelings that have been on their heart or memories that have been on their mind that they want to share, and you can just listen and hold space and be a safe person for them. Maybe there's someone that you know that's lost someone or lost something and is grieving, and you know you're going to be at this gathering or event or party with them, maybe you ask them ahead and say, Hey, I'm going to be your safe support person. Let's design a safe word so that you can say it to me, and I can kind of get you out of any group situation, and we can take a moment away, if people are asking you too many questions or pressuring you, or you're feeling overwhelmed, maybe it's that your safe work could be something super easy, like pound cake or sugar cookies, whatever, whatever doesn't throw up a lot of alarms. Maybe it's that you're going to go with them, and you're going to be committed to leaving early to being their excuse to leave early if they want to, or maybe you're just going to ask them, Hey, I know that this party might feel hard for you, and I'm going to be there too. And what can I do to support you? And please feel free to call me aside and let me know as the night goes on, if there's something that you realize that I could do to be helpful. It reminds me of, if you're a fan of that show, How I Met Your Mother, they had a wedding in one of the later episodes, and one of the people's partners couldn't be there. And what she wanted someone to do was fill up her glass anytime they saw that it was empty, and that was how they could help her. So maybe there are some very concrete, easy ways, or simple ways that someone can support you, or that you can support someone else. Try to figure out what they are. Offer gentle invitations as another way of supporting people you care about. Invite them to join in a holiday activity, but without the pressure, let them know it's okay to say no, but the invitation stands if they change their mind, let them know you don't care if they wear pajamas to dinner, maybe that you just want to include them, that they don't have to be responsible for carrying conversation, that you just want them to show up and then they can go, if that's what they're feeling up to, or even just letting them know that you're there for whatever they feel up to or not up to, and If it's that they need to cancel at the last minute, that you totally honor that and and love them either way, you
don't want anyone to feel obligated, especially not someone who's grieving or struggling with feelings of overwhelm and loss. Another way you can be supportive is to check in frequently. Sometimes the most difficult days are the ones leading up to the holidays. Sometimes we don't realize how affected we are because we're so busy in our busy lives, and then things get still for a moment, and those waves of grief or anxiety or overwhelm can rise up. So maybe you have a little regular text message that you're sending with someone, that you're just taking their temperature, or you're just asking them for a feeling word, or you're just checking in, and whatever their response is, is fine. I had someone I was doing this for a while with, and we actually were only sending back and forth the little memes or GIFs, GIFs, gifts, whatever it is, the little pictures instead of words and feelings, because they just weren't in that place, but they could send back a funny little picture, or a picture that or a gift or a meme that was displaying the emotion they had, they couldn't put words to it. So whatever you can do to be checking in, check in frequently, even if it's just, uh, checking in and saying, Hey, I'm thinking of you. Just want you to know you're loved. Just want you to know I'm thinking of you really. You know, there's this parent that comes to mind that I worked with a handful of years ago that had lost a kiddo on the other side, and what they said is, when you say my kid's name, you're not reminding me that they passed away. You're letting me know that you remember that they lived. So if you have someone in your family or in your circle that's lost someone, don't be afraid to say that person's name. Maybe you don't want. Do it at a big party in front of a lot of people, but don't be afraid to let them talk about that person. Don't avoid the subject. They want to honor that that person lived and truthfully still lives on in my perspective. So what are some practical coping tools that we can use, whether it's for someone else or for ourselves? We can find daily gratitude and small joys. Maybe we can't embrace the joy of the season in this moment if we're deeply in grief, but we could find little ways, maybe not in a not, not in a making everything okay. Susie sunshine, kind of a way it's important not to deny grief, like I was saying, but maybe we could find small moments of joy or comfort that can help maintain a little bit of balance. Kind of reminds me of when things are really tough, and then something funny happens, and everyone laughs just for, just for 30 seconds. And then even if we go right back to worrying, we have that little relief, that little moment of comfort or break from the focus, so we can, like I was saying, do things like daily gratitude journals, where we focus on small positive aspects of each day. I do this sometimes, and you may have heard me say this before, but depending on what's happening in the world or in my life, sometimes the things I'm saying that I'm grateful for feel very simple. Sometimes it's hot water that gets hot on demand and comes to my pipes. Sometimes it's really great pressured running water indoors. That means a lot to me. There are some very simple things that I can find gratitude for, even when things are really hard, and maybe that's a place to start again. It's always a great idea to seek professional help, grief counseling, therapy. They can also provide a safe environment to process deep sadness or unresolved emotions or help with the grieving process. And I think it's important to normalize seeking help by discussing how it can be an important tool and navigating difficult emotions, take that stigma off, right? Talk about if you work with a therapist or a coach, or if you read a book, not saying that it's the answer for other people, but just sharing more openly. Hey, I tried this tool. I really liked it. Here's how I'm using it doesn't mean you have to take that extra step and say, This is what you need, or this is what you should use, but just say this is what I did, and normalizing a little bit, right? And the other thing is, we can even check in in our own emotional temperature throughout the day and name the feeling that we're feeling in this moment. We might be feeling okay in one part of the day and another part of the day, grief might swell up and just knock us over. But if we're checking hour by hour on our own emotions, on our own emotional temperature, I just realized the other day I was really struggling, and I got still, and I said, Let me name this emotion. And first I thought it was melancholy or just lack of motivation. And then I realized, Oh no, this is grief. Grief gets sneaky. It doesn't always come on the same way. It doesn't always wear the same outfit or come in the same breeze, right? It feels different at different times. So even just getting a little more clear on naming our feelings, even if we don't do anything about it, most of the time with grief, we just can sit in the grief and let it be. It might help to try another tool, but it also might be just letting that emotion rise up, be present with it, and then let it subside, an important thing to remember, while we can't bypass the emotions, and we should definitely be processing them. Emotions are like the weather. Sometimes one's there for a few days, but sometimes they can come and pass just like the clouds. And just know that there is a different emotion to follow any emotion, so won't be a forever emotion, and emotions, as we know, come in different volumes and strengths. One emotion might feel really loud or really heavy in a moment and a couple hours later, while it still might be there, it might not be the most prominent emotion in your space. So becoming aware of that can sometimes help us roll with those waves of emotions. Maybe not easier, but with a little more awareness that it's not a permanent state that we have to stay in. And the other thing is, it's important to keep your departed loved one with you during the holidays, they're always with you, but if you can find ways to acknowledge or think about them or maybe honor them feels too strong for you, but maybe, for example, if you had a grandpa that loved his coin collection, maybe for the holiday season, you're just gonna carry a penny in your pocket as a little loving nod to him. It can be something really simple, but. Just imagine keeping them with you, let them witness and support you from the other side. It's what they're doing anyway, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, they are with you. It's so important in closing that we really embrace both the light and the shadow. This season of light doesn't negate the presence of shadows. Mean they're always there. We always have challenging emotions as part of our human experience, but both can coexist, positive emotions and challenging emotions, and that's okay, but by acknowledging our shadow side, our grief, our sadness, our overwhelm, our anxiety, we honor the full spectrum of our human experience. And talking about all of it is important, even if, like I said, you don't have to talk about all of it with everybody. And I want to put out a call to compassion. I want to encourage you to be compassionate with yourself and with others. Often we think about having you know, the way we hear it or say it that I've heard quite a bit in my lifetime is compassionate for those less fortunate than us. Well, what does that mean? I think we often think of it in a monetary way. But you know, maybe someone isn't so fortunate to have a loved one still with them this holiday, and we can really find compassion for those nuanced experiences that we all experience as human beings during a time of year that's often so focused on these external displays of joy and happiness, we can turn inward and nurture our emotions and our spiritual health. It's a great time to dial into that spiritual practice. I keep saying it, whether it's prayer or meditation or contemplation or journaling or, you know, whatever it is for you finding a spiritual practice or personal practice. Some people love yoga. Some people like going for a walk. Some people like running. It doesn't have to be slow and gentle. It can be whatever it is that you find spiritual for yourself and find reflective moments. Take a pause or a moment of silence to acknowledge those we've lost as individuals, or even those parts of ourselves that might be grieving, and if it's not you personally, you can also take a moment to just hold silence for someone else that's lost someone or for what we've lost collectively, in our own communities, in our own country, in our own societies,
we may have
lost parts of ourselves, and we can grow more expanded parts of ourselves, but it's important to honor the feelings we're feeling moment by moment, and resist the urge to just jump over them and get to what's next.
And this is how we do it, through reflection and honoring.
And I want to send out compassion to any of you that have lost someone this year or even in the recent years, that is feeling heavy on your heart right now, whether it's loss of a loved one or loss of someone you were maybe estranged from that you did love, or any other type of loss in our lives, whether it's like I said, work related or family related, or separation or heartbreak of any kind. And I want to offer you this Hopi prayer in closing. This is a beautiful prayer that I found online. It is, uh, belongs to the Hopi people, H, O, P,
I hopey.
And it's titled, do not stand at my grave and weep. And I'm going to read this poem as just an offering to each of you, do not stand at my grave and weep. I am not there. I do not sleep. I am 1000 winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on the snow. I am the sunlight on the ripened grain. I am the gentle Autumn's rain. When you awaken in the morning Hush, I am the Swift, uplifting rush of quiet BIRD IN A circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry. I am not there. I did not die. I am so grateful to each of you that hold compassion, that hold light, that hold love, and all of you also hold your own shadow and grief and overwhelm for. Thank you for being here with me in this season of light that is also a season of grief for many, and I love that you're showing up to intentionally get support for yourself and learn how to support others and how to be in community. I'm not going anywhere, so let's keep showing up for one another. Each of you means so so much to me, and I love that we are closing out another year together. So however you are feeling day to day, moment by moment, in this season of light, just know that you're not alone. Big hugs. Lots of love. Bye for now from inside spirit speakeasy.