We tend to talk a lot about the big shifts in our lives that grief creates: the holidays without our loved ones, the missed milestones and celebrations, the future partners and kids that our people will never meet. But grief lives in the small spaces too, and sometimes those are the ones that can take us most by surprise.

New years don’t always mean new beginnings. Sometimes they are painful reminders of endings. Sometimes while the world is looking forward, we’re living in a separate space where time stands still, becomes muddled, or disappears altogether.

During the earliest weeks and months after my sister’s death, I often wrote what I needed to hear. If you’re feeling the deep pain of loss, perhaps these words that I wrote might hold something that you need to hear too.

Gathering with loved ones can heighten the ways we all experience the same loss in different ways. The framework of intuitive and instrumental grieving can help us understand other ways of grieving.

Here we are, doing impossible things.

There’s so much about grief that no one tells us, including how much it impacts every piece of our being. It takes over our bodies, minds, hearts, and spirit in ways that we likely aren’t prepared for and that we may not recognize.

As we begin a week that may feel tender on many fronts, here are a few of my thoughts and reminders for managing the holidays when you are living with grief.

You are allowed to feel however you feel in your grief - heartbroken, angry, anxious, jealous - without forcing yourself to manufacture gratitude.

What does your grief touch that no one else sees?

Grief ooesn’t need a solution. Grief needs a witness.