Grief and Holidays: How to Navigate and Cope with This Season with Ease.
Holidays take place throughout the year as times for joy, celebration, and family, but for many, these times are also full of sadness and the feeling of loss. Fran Solomon visited Get a G.R.I.P. with Coach Elix to share her experiences in coping with grief during the holidays.
Fran Solomon, founder HealGrief.org, serves on the Cedars Sinai Board of Governors and hosts the podcast "Let's Talk Death!... a HealGrief program." When she discovered a lack of grief support following the death of her own father, Fran turned her struggles into motivation. She founded HealGrief and committed herself to developing spaces and resources to help others dealing with grief.
Understanding and Accepting Grief
Fran reminds us that "grief is a natural response to a death/loss." Rather than a set of five stages that people pass through (which they don't, as people tend to cycle or vacillate through these "stages' or feelings of grief over and over), HealGrief states that "grief is a lifelong journey."
Learning how to cope with grief can be a lifelong journey. When we lose someone, we feel constantly surrounded by thoughts of them and times shared with them. This is especially true around the holiday season.
Fran reminds us that we can displace grief. When grief falls over our joy, we can confuse our feelings, thinking the pain we feel comes from the source of joy. Acknowledging the continual, cyclical nature of grief and recognizing the true source of our grief when it arrives during joyful events frees us to approach our feelings differently.
Using Grief as Means to Move Forward
We should embrace the freedom and power in grieving by reframing the negativity and guilt, or the stoic "be strong" and "move on" to accept these emotions and sit with them. When we accept that our loss changed everything, we can begin to move forward with the new reality and embrace the memories of our person.
Fran's experiences with grief have taught her to deeply appreciate "how I want to live life," emphasizing "want" and "choose." Learning to "love more deeply, to forgive quickly, and to be as present as possible in the moment" changed every relationship for Fran.
She poses the question: how do we remember, embrace, and honor our person who is with us in mind, in heart, and in spirit? How do we keep that connection going?
Honoring the traditions that bring recollections and connections with loved ones while embracing new traditions can help transform grief during the holidays into happiness and good memories.
Stay active and present, and let grief come. Don't be afraid to talk about the person who is still very present in our hearts and minds. The love remains, so lean into it and let it bring healing.
Connecting with Fran Solomon
The G.R.I.P. Method
G.R.I.P. stands for "Greatness Requires Intention & Purpose," and many who have followed this method can attest to that. This strategy helps people find their goals, inspirations, and visions and execute them with clear intentions through planning, purpose, and integrity. It works with science and psychology to make dreams a reality.
It is a roadmap that guides you through struggles and hardships, with the final destination being the life you want to lead or the changes you wish to make. The G.R.I.P. Method offers a plan to go from fear to freedom and helps you break away from where past attempts did not work.
