Every year, as the holiday season approaches, my inbox fills up. The emails come from siblings — people just like you — who are struggling to make sense of what the holidays feel like now, after loss. I read every one of them, and I want you to know: what you’re feeling is real, it is valid, and you are not alone in it.
The holidays are hard for grieving siblings in a way that is genuinely difficult to explain to people who haven’t been through it. The world seems to shift into a kind of enforced joy — the music, the lights, the gatherings, the expectation that everyone will be warm and present and grateful. And there you are, heartbroken. Still carrying the weight of someone who is missing from every table, every tradition, every moment that used to include them.
Unless someone has suffered a loss like ours, I think it’s genuinely difficult for them to understand what it feels like to be deeply sad when everyone around you is wrapping presents and singing along to holiday songs. We are often filled with a profound sense of loneliness, even in the middle of a room full of family and friends. The holidays don’t soften grief — they amplify it. They hold up a mirror to everything that’s changed, everything that’s been lost.
It’s okay if you’re struggling. It’s okay if you want to skip it all this year. Grief is hard work, and the holidays ask you to perform happiness at the exact moment you may have the least capacity for it. Many of us feel like outsiders during this season — present in body, but somewhere else entirely in spirit. Many of us simply want to be alone, and that’s okay too.
I won’t tell you it gets easy, because I don’t believe in offering hollow comfort. What I will tell you is that you don’t have to pretend. You don’t have to be fine. You are allowed to grieve openly and fully, even — especially — during the holiday season. Be gentle with yourself. Lower the expectations you carry. Do only what feels right for you, and let the rest go.
I’m here, struggling alongside you, and sending you so much love — wherever you are in this journey.
— T.J.