Emotional Healing: Holidays … Remembering To Do The Right Thing

Dr. TED WIARD
Golden Willow Retreat

Editors Note: This is part of a series by grief specialist Dr. Ted Wiard, dedicated to helping educate the community about emotional healing.

December is a month of many holidays such as Chanukah, Kwanza, Christmas, Winter Solstice, New Years, and many more.

Traditionally it is a month encompassed by charity, peace, love, family, community, cheer, gatherings, and mindful actions. It encourages joyful energy within business as well as within one’s personal world.

A time to honor the year, remember what has come and gone and move forward into the next phase of another year. It is also a time to honor spirituality, religious traditions, and a higher meaning to the world in which we live in.

This year it may feel as if much of our usual ways of being have been hijacked due to the pandemic. And during these holidays, this may feel magnified due to a year of constraints, compounded on the holiday traditions being filtered, taken away, or changed in one form or another.

Shopping, gatherings, caroling, school holidays, traveling, family connections, religious gatherings, the arts, community events, and more have had to change or not exist at all. When there is change there is loss and there is a natural and normal healing process called grief.

In the grief process there is the need to acknowledge there is loss, and from that acknowledgement, heal and transform that loss into a more conscious and mindful way of being. Loss often does not make sense and it can feel so unfair and excruciating. We want to deny loss from our consciousness, then protest that loss, then try to change the loss, then sit with that loss until we realize that the loss is real and truly part of our experience in life.

From this acknowledgment, we can start to step into our new life, hopefully bringing wisdom from the past to help us in the present situation.

We are in the darkest times of the year as well as exceedingly difficult times spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. The pandemic has magnified other systemic faults within our ways of being, and we are being given the chance to mend and heal. 

The different holidays within this season have a similar theme of being able to stay persistent through the trials and tribulations, all while finding community in the commonality of love and humanity. This year more than any other, is a time where we need to embrace the holiday spirit, be more mindful, and come from a place of “the betterment for all, not just a few”.

It is a year to possibly step out of our comfort zones and do the right thing for all beings. Deciding to be flexible, mindful, and listening with an open heart, is the best gift in healing from loss as well as the best gift that can be given this year to the entire world!

We may not make sense of why there is a loss but from that loss, we have the opportunity to make more sense out of our lives and the life around us. May this be what we all take into 2021, one breath at a time with conscious actions will help us step into this next year. I wish you well, and until the next year, take care.  

Golden Willow Retreat is a nonprofit organization focused on emotional healing and recovery from any type of loss. Direct any questions or learn more about virtual grief groups to Dr. Ted Wiard, EdD, LPCC, CGC, Founder of Golden Willow Retreat GWR@newmex.com or call at 575.776.2024.

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