Finding Your Way: Navigating the First Holiday Season After Divorce
After a divorce, separation, or break-up, the holiday season can be emotionally challenging. Looking ahead might fill us with anxiety, but preparing in advance can mitigate feelings of loneliness or sadness and allow us to recenter ourselves amidst the un-grounded-ness associated with shifting shared traditions. What follows are some strategies to help navigate the holidays with grace and health.
Acknowledge your feelings
Perhaps the most important practice for getting ready and moving through the holidays is a commitment to acknowledging your feelings as they arise. Feeling sadness, anger, anxiety, fear, shame, and loneliness are all a part of grieving. We may also have feelings of hope and new horizons ahead. Acknowledge these feelings and allow them to show up without judgement. The holidays are often an opportune time for reflecting on and acknowledging our choices, identifying what we can and cannot control, and practicing self-compassion and self-love. This ongoing journey that holidays heighten may bring more focused opportunities for revisioning our place in time, starting by acknowledging and working with what we feel in the present.
Practical strategy: Create time and space in your schedule to reflect, acknowledge your feelings, and allow space to let them flow through you. Consider journaling or getting some fresh air and space to breathe by going for a walk at Druid Hill Park, the NCR Trail, or Patapsco Valley.
Get clear on your own wants and needs this holiday season
The holidays are often accompanied by circumscribed expectations for travel, hosting, and buying presents. After a breakup, it is important to reflect on what will be best for YOU to choose to do. You may find yourself shifting priorities in choosing travel plans, the amount of time dedicated to social events, and time and money spent in the process of gift giving. Give yourself permission to make decisions that make sense for you and your well-being at this time. Check your gut when making plans and respect your own boundaries and limitations. Block out time for you on your calendar, so you have time for yourself to look forward to!
Practical Strategy: Consider the gatherings and traditions you definitely want to say “yes” to and those you feel ok saying, “no” to. For example, if going to the Hampden Christmas Lights on 34th Street is an annual holiday tradition, consider whether continuing this tradition feels healing and empowering or simply too painful this year.
Accept the invitation – or don’t
The holidays are a time for togetherness. If you are heading out to a gathering or hosting one it is important to remember – as much as you are able – to be who you are now. Resist temptations to mask your feelings and “be happy” for the holidays. Accept joy as it comes but also accept that you may have limited energy for socializing or being merry. Showing up to the holidays as your authentic self in this time of transition may be the best way to receive support from friends and family. Letting people know what you are going through is the first step to allowing yourself to be cared for.
Sometimes the holidays may bring a unique kind of loneliness. Media images of happy people and celebrations create expectations that may not align with how we feel during this time. Avoiding being social can lead us into unhealthy isolation. It’s important to both acknowledge we may not want to be around others but that we also need to be social to be healthy. Checking in with our values and our feelings will help us to choose how to best navigate being around friends and family during the holidays.
If isolation becomes a problem, and you sense hopelessness or depression setting in, then it is time to reach out for help. Consider the friends and family members who could be of support, or consider if professional help from a therapist is more of what you’re needing.
Practical Strategy: Ask yourself what kind of support you are needing this holiday season? Who are the people you want and need that support from? Communicate that to them. If you’re not feeling up for large, crowded gatherings this year, consider meeting up with a friend or family member at a local coffee shop like Artifact or RHouse.
Support children by supporting yourself
It is important as a parent to take care of yourself and your needs and feelings to best support your children through a new holiday family arrangement. Everyone in the family experiences separation. Adults, children, and teens all experience separation differently depending on their developmental age and unique personality. Being grounded in self-acceptance and self-care is vital to supporting your children as they adapt to change and find new ways to welcome the holidays.
Acknowledging and planning for your changing wants and needs during the holidays is a way of planning for (and taking care of) your future self. Give yourself the gifts of grace and patience, even if the world around you is clamoring for attention or something sparkly. Build new traditions one minute at a time. You’ll stay true to your present and wind up with a whole day-full of memories.
Practical Strategy: Identify the ways you want and need to take care of yourself, so you can be the best YOU for yourself and for your children this season. Give yourself permission to create and implement your own holiday self-care plan.
Search Our Other Blogs!
Interested in Online & In-Person Counseling for Depression, Loneliness, Life Transitions, Boundaries, or Grief and Loss?
If you’re a Marylander who knows that counseling is the direction you need to take, the therapists at LifeSpring Counseling Services are here to help. We offer online counseling services for mindfulness, depression, anxiety, trauma, and grief and loss. We also offer Brainspotting as a specialized service, and Brainspotting can be done online, too!
Here’s how you can get started! Online and in-person counseling for depression, loneliness, life transitions, boundaries, and grief and loss aren’t the only service offered at our Baltimore, MD office.
The counselors and social workers at our Maryland office also offer counseling services for trauma, grief and loss, boundary setting, communication skills, and difficult life transitions. We also offer specialized counseling services including Brainspotting and spiritually-integrated counseling. Because we are located next to several local universities, we also work with college students.
Written by: Dave Cloutier, Counseling Intern
Dave Cloutier is a counseling intern at LifeSpring Counseling Services who offers individual counseling services to adults at our Baltimore City office. Dave works with individuals navigating grief and loss, depression, anxiety, and other difficult life transitions.
