Seven Ways To Survive The Holidays While Grieving

Seven Ways To Survive The Holidays While Grieving

Grief and the holidays sadly go hand in hand for many of us. Memories and loses coincide just when we are supposed to be happiest.

Kristyn Lohoff, who lost her husband to cancer, shares some of her strategies for this time of year.

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Grief and the holidays

The holidays can be a difficult time.

When the holiday season arrives many people find themselves busy planning family gatherings,  preparing meals, wrapping gifts, baking cookies, and attending different holiday programs. For people who are living with grief from the loss of a loved one, the holidays can become an overwhelming time. I have learned a lot about how to survive the holidays while grieving. 

 

Grief and The Holidays

 

I lost my husband in October of 2017, and the first holiday season without him came quickly. Just two months later I was faced with how to celebrate without him. I actually lost seven family members in 26 months, with my husband’s death being the final one. Two other losses were my mother and father-in-law. They had always come to our home over the holidays and that first year without them left my house feeling especially empty. 

 

Grief and the holidays

We always gathered around a bonfire

 

Our tradition of a family gathering with an evening bonfire and a gift exchange was something that I had no motivation to do that first year, but it was something that was very important to all of my children. I found a way to get through that first holiday while grieving. 

Surviving the holidays while grieving was so emotionally difficult for me, that I needed two days to recover and be able to get out of bed once again. In spite of this, I felt that the first holiday season was a victory! Here are seven things that I have learned because of my own experiences

 

Allow Yourself to Feel Without Guilt

 

Grief and a new year

A New Year will bring a new life, different from what you’d imagined.

 

The holidays are an emotional time. It is Ok if you start to cry, even if you are in line at the grocery store!

You are missing someone special.

Your new life is now very different from what you were used to, it is different from what you envisioned for yourself.

Allow yourself to feel what you are feeling.

Giving yourself permission to let those emotions out will discharge some of the pain so that healing can happen. 

 

Plan Ahead

 

Planning ahead for grief

 

For the first holiday after losing my husband, I was overcome by the intense early grief that I was feeling and there was no way to really plan ahead. Thanks to the help of my adult children, we were able to keep things for our family celebration similar to what they had been in the past. This was very important to them and to my younger daughters. 

During my first year as a widow, I learned how to use a bullet journal to help me be prepared and feel less stressed by the responsibilities of daily life.

I used it to plan our second holiday season without my husband. By taking time to reflect about how I wanted to holidays to go, I was able to plan when to do the things that I wanted.

My second holiday season looked very different from my first. I actually took my family on a road trip and we experienced the holiday season in New Orleans, LA while staying in our RV. Being away from home felt good, and that year I didn’t need two days afterwards to recover in bed.

Improvement!

 

Keep Things Manageable

 

Making a holiday list to deal with grief

Lists help us prioritize busy holiday activities

 

Make a list of all of the things that you feel must be accomplished.

Then, reflect on the things that you truly want to do and the things that you feel you must do.

Do you really need to send holiday cards to every friend or family member you know?

Do you really need to send any?

Let some things go, it’s OK! Trim your old list of things you felt needed to be done down to a new list of only a few “Must Do” items.

It’s OK if you don’t participate in the cookie exchange this year.

It’s OK if you change traditions to make things easier, these changes may make the holiday better for everyone!

Be honest and tell people what you DO want to do for the holidays and what you DO NOT want to do. 

 

Find Time For Yourself

 

brief and healing

Find time to be alone

 

Make sure to plan some time for yourself.

Give yourself time to rest.  Go for a walk. Listen to music. Take a nap.

Spend time journaling or drawing.

Plan a getaway.

Sit in a coffee shop.

Write a list of ten things that you would like to do for yourself during the holiday season. Write anything that comes to your mind and then select the top three from your list and make arrangements for those things to happen.

If you plan something for just you, especially after the holiday is over, it may give you something to look forward to. This can help you get through some difficult moments.

 

Find A Way To Honor Your Loved One

 

Grief and the holidays

Promise kept. John at the Pacific Ocean.

 

It may be helpful to find a way to honor and include your lost loved one into part of your celebrations.

You could create a memorial table with pictures of those who are not with you anymore.

You could set a spot at the table for your loved one, cook a favorite dish, or light a candle to remember them.

You could create a memorial decoration or ornament in your loved one’s memory.

You may like to set aside a time to visit their gravesite and leave holiday decorations there. 

 

Talk About Your Loved One

 

travel to heal, cancer

Ready to travel!

 

It can be helpful to talk about the person who has died as a way to survive the holidays while grieving. Many times people are afraid to bring up the person’s name, but talking about them, saying their name and sharing memories can be very helpful.

By sharing stories over and over, the pain of the loss may lessen. It’s another way to let the pain out and begin to feel joy over time. 

 

Travel and Healing From Grief

 

travel to heal, cancer

Kristyn and John in their RV

 

Looking back, it seems that my mother first taught me that travel was a helpful way to deal with grief.

My father died when I was seven, and a couple of months later my mom took our family to DisneyWorld. My parents had been putting money away for this trip for many years, and now, with one less person, it would cost less and she could then afford the trip.  Off to DisneyWorld we went!

Over forty years later, I still have vivid memories of that trip and how good it felt to be away from our home where my father had died. For years afterwards, my mother planned trip after trip after trip.

 

I grew up thinking that she just liked to travel, but once I became a widow myself, I understood the power of travel to heal a grieving soul. 

 

After losing my mother, father-in-law and my husband in a little more than two years, I instinctively began planning a trip that I hoped would bring me and my young daughters some peace. Losses so big would need a monumental trip, and that is exactly what I planned.

Seven months after my husband died I packed up my motorhome and began an epic trip that would log 13,800 miles, included 22 national parks, and provide us with the opportunity to catch up with family and make new friends. 

Grief and the holidays

North Rim, Grand Canyon

 

I created an itinerary of places to go that had been on the bucket list that my husband and I had created together. The trip became a mission for him.

 

But, as the days went on, I found out that the trip was really about my healing, and the healing of my daughters.

 

I first noticed this after driving for days from my Wisconsin home, stopping at different places until I had literally run out of road and found myself staring out at the Pacific Ocean in northern California. It was breathtaking.

 

Healing from grief at the ocean

The Pacific Ocean

 

I sat on the beach watching my girls run around and investigate and just letting my mind wander. I cried, but my soul was also filled with the calm beauty of nature, and I felt a piece of joy seeping back into my life.

 

grief and healing

All who wander are not lost: A view from the RV

 

I did some research and learned about other people who had turned to the powers of nature to heal their broken souls. Theodore Roosevelt lost both his mother and his wife on the same day. Shortly after, he went out to the American West for many months in order to find a way to live with those losses. Nature and travel provided his soul with some comfort, and he later devoted much of his presidency to protecting lands for future generations. 

John Muir, from my home state of Wisconsin, went out to California and found the beautiful Beauty in the Yosemite Valley. He later created the Sierra Club and fought for decades so that Yosemite could become one of our first national parks. He later worked to help protect the Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest as national parks.

I have been to over twenty national parks and each time I spend time sitting and letting nature soothe my soul. I enjoy finding out what is special and unique about each park. I let that special thing seep into my body and give me strength to face a new day. 

 

Grief is a marathon.

 

Whether you are grieving the loss of a loved one, the loss of a pet, the loss of relationship, or the loss of a lifestyle, grief is a daily marathon that we must find the tools around us which will help us to continue moving on.

On my epic RV road trip, I found myself sitting off of a trail along the edge of the north rim of the Grand Canyon without anyone near me.

Grief and the holidays

At the rim of the Grand Canyon

I slipped my coffee and stared at the beauty in front of me. And I felt like I could go on with my life.

 

Travel is healing. Nature is healing. Putting the two together becomes amazingly powerful.

 

Find your way to survive the holidays while grieving. Safe travels and happy holidays!

 

Kristyn is a teacher by day and grief and travel expert every other moment of the day. She lives with her two youngest daughters, a dog and a cat and her motorhome affectionately named CeeCee in Northern Wisconsin. She hopes to find a way to live full-time in her RV. You can visit her website and learn more about her adventures in surviving grief by visiting her website at www.ourclassceelife.com


More Reading on Cancer and Travel

Traveling To Heal: 83 Days on the Road

Visiting The Galapagos

Good Travel Books For The Holidays and All Days

One Cancer Patient’s Ultimate Travel Bucket List

 

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Grief and the holidays

 

 

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Good Travel Books For The Holidays and For All Days

Good Travel Books For The Holidays and For All Days

Good travel books cover new terrain. It may mean mean touring the world. Or perhaps it means looking within.

In either direction, travel always offers adventure. Here is a bit of literary adventure in both directions.

Books for Traveling Within

The journey within oneself is at least as interesting as any world wide voyages. Her are some of the travel books that have been along on my journey:

 

I first saw Bernie Siegel many years ago at Yale. He was speaking to an audience of surgeons who, to say the least, didn’t believe in anything that didn’t include a scalpel.

But Bernie has had the last laugh. Science is finally coming around to his prescient thinking about the power of love and the power of our minds to influence our health and healing.  

This book is a classic for a reason. Anyone would be delighted to receive this as a gift, any time of the year.

 

 

Good Travel BooksThe Power of Now has been one of the most influential books of my life. With a great deal of practice on my part, it has shown me that the present moment is what counts. Not your worries; not your words. Just NOW. 

For your life’s travels, this book is a companion you won’t tire of.

 

 

Good Travel Books

 

This is a book I bought long ago, and it’s accompanied me on many travels. Zukav looks at our interactions from a perspective of energy. And when you start thinking in these terms, it provides a trail map for all your travels. This is truly a good travel book for every soulful adventure.

 

 

 

Good Travel BooksJoe Dispenza’s story is amazing. He was told he’d never walk again after a horrific biking accident. But using intense visualization he healed a broken back. 

With a scientific bent, he looks at the power of our minds in our daily life and the power we have to heal. He also goes into some fascination meditation technques (that are just mind blowing!). 

Love this book. Check it out!

 



Jim Gordon is someone I’ve admired for many years. He is a Harvard trained psychiatrist who travels the world helping people heal from trauma. He is also the founder of the Center for Mind Body Medicine.

The Transformation is a book that has resulted from Jim’s years of study and teaching, and from his  travels across the globe, into war zones and other disaster areas. In this book, he encourages each of us to look within to heal, and he provides the tools to pursue the journey.

I was fortunate enough to interview Jim a few years ago. You can watch the interview here. And if you’re interested in becoming involved in his project, check out cmbm.org

 

I am currently reading this book and it is a must read. Dean Shrock has oodles of sources, some of which I’ve read (Like Molecules of Emotion by Candace Perth) and others that I haven’t. 

This is an excellent book drawing from Dean’s decades of cancer care and his careful research. I heartedly recommend this and all the books on this page.

 

 

 

 

Good Books For Travel

And then there is the wonderful adventure of travel. The world is a big place; where to go? 

1,000 Places is a classic and one that should live on your wanderlust bookshelf, or on your phone. So many ideas! Want to visit World Heritage Sites? European capitals? Asian temples? 

All this and so much more. This is a great place to start your travels. A good travel book for all times.

 

Travel, for me, is also about history. And in that vein, both fiction and non-fiction offer a chance for travel.  A few of my favorites:

 

Good Travel BooksLong before I visited Africa, the stories of British East Africa called to me. There was Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa, but for me, the book of that era was always West With The Night.

Beryl Markham was an extraordinary woman, pilot, and adventurer. Many years ago, I came across this book and read it again and again. I still go back for the vivid prose. Here’s an example:

“Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer’s paradise, a hunter’s Valhalla, an escapist’s Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just ‘home.”

An African adventure in time and space. A must read.

Good Travel Books

This is a classic for a reason. And an international best seller. It took me many years before I read this, and it’s now one of my favorite travel books. 

Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy, yearns to travel. So he does. And along the way, he finds himself. A good travel book indeed!

 

 

 

Good Travel Books

One of the most heart warming reads of all time, chronicling Peter Gethers global travels with his Scottish Fold cat, Norton. Part travel, part adventure and all heart. 

 

 

 

 

No travel book list is complete without the wisdom of Dr. Seuss. I  just love this book. It starts: 

“Congratulations! Today is your day. You’re off to great places. You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”

And so starts any great adventure.

 

 

 

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One Cancer Patient’s Ultimate Travel Bucket List

One Cancer Patient’s Ultimate Travel Bucket List

What’s an ultimate travel bucket list? Psychologist and award winning author Robin McGee (The Cancer Olympics) shares her perspective on travel, healing and cancer.

Her recent travels, with and in spite of cancer, include Ireland, France, Italy and a transcontinental North American road trip.

Fill Your Bucket

When I learned my cancer had recurred, I was only weeks away from a trip to Ireland with my three sisters.   That trip had a spiritual significance to me, as while the four of us helped our parents through their deaths the year before, we promised each other we would go.  My Dad was from Belfast, and we had heard about it our whole lives.  It meant the world to me to go, seeing as it might be my last trip ever.

Ultimate travel bucket list

Robin (second from right) wit her three sisters in Ireland

My cancer doctors were understanding.  They knew my disease might be inoperable, so they kindly delayed the titanic chemotherapy until the day after my return.   So my sisters and I went for two weeks.  I loved every minute.  Cancer dread hovered at the edges, but I was able to focus and absorb the staggering beauty of that jewel of an island.  I saw the green fields my father had told me about.  I met relatives.  I drank Guinness.  The trip gave me a fount of joy to draw upon as I faced my devastating treatments.

Ultimate travel bucket list

Months of devastating chemo ensued

And devastating they were.  Months of brutal chemotherapy followed by a 12-hour surgery followed by more harsh chemo. Hideous mind-bending surgical complications, followed by months of treatment away from home, followed by another 13-hour surgery, followed by more treatments.

And where was travel in all of that mix?  Sadly, the cancer could not be fully excised, as a biopsy revealed cancer cells deep in the pelvic sidewall. My time is limited.  So I embraced travel as a way to have quality of life for the time I have remaining.

In July of 2018, I was in a wheelchair due to chemo side effects.  Nevertheless, I went to France on a river cruise with family.

While everyone else was eating the gorgeous French food, I was having the consume.

While others could walk the cobblestone streets, I jounced and vibrated along in my chair.

And yet, the glorious and poignant history, the awe-inspiring Cathedrals, and the peaceful Seine, and the breathtaking art were all absorbing.

If one is going to feel unwell, one may as well feel unwell in Paris!

I recovered some money in the medical malpractice lawsuit that followed the heinous events described in my 2014 book The Cancer Olympics.  The funds allowed me a truly joyous bucket-list opportunity – to rent a villa in Tuscany for two weeks and invite my six siblings and their spouses.

This time, I was well enough to walk (and more importantly, EAT).  It brought tears of elation to my eyes to see my family enjoying the place and each other, to see them enraptured by the art and the vistas, and to celebrate my continued survival.

Tuscan villa

A Tuscan Villa, complete with pool

Finally, my treatments ended this past spring (2019).  I could start mending.  So my husband and I traveled across Canada in our 18-foot trailer, a journey which I reacted to in my blog integrating cancer with famous songs.  The journey took three months, during which we opened our souls to the spectacular landscapes and fascinating stories of my home and native land.

Ultimate travel bucket list

Robin with her husband

Ultimate travel bucket list

A windswept praire in central Canada

On a windswept Prairie I saw a hawk land on a fencepost.  He settled in majesty, scanning the horizon as hawks have done for millennia.  It was an instant, and yet it was forever.

As I watched him, all at once, the vastness and infinitude of nature descended into my mind.  I realized: I am nature, I am culture, I am history.

Civilizations and even landscapes pass away, as we all must.

Coming to terms with incurable cancer means facing and accepting our own impermanence.

Ultimate travel bucket list

The vastness and infinitude of nature

Travel underscores those lessons.

We must treasure family, place, and experience.  So much of life is wonderous.

Fill your bucket, fill yourself.

***

What’s your ultimate travel bucket list? Could it be an all expense paid healing retreat? Click here to learn more. 

More Reading On Cancer, Travel and Healing

Traveling To Heal: 83 Days on the Road

Thoughts on the Metaphor of a Road Trip

Traveling The Timeline Of Now

Visiting the Galapagos

Healing Travel For A Better Matrix

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Bucket-List-Travel

If you’re interested in learning more about photography (or cooking or film or any number of topics) check out MasterClass All-Access Pass for on-line excellence:

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What is #CancerRoadTrip and how did it come to be? Read this post to get the backstory! 

Follow me on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and at Anti-Cancer Club.  Connect with me!  I may need a place or two to stay along the way!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin