How I Stopped Letting the Holidays Break My Heart

There was a stretch of years when the holidays started to feel more melancholy than magical.

Maybe you know that feeling. It hurts.

I’d look around and realize how much had changed.
Mom gone. Sister gone. Some friends gone. Now my brother gone.

The kids had their own lives and their own ideas about where to be and how to celebrate. And I had physically moved further away from my old life, my old house, my old “this is what we always do.”

The holidays used to be loud. Crowded. Too many dishes in the sink. Kids laughing. Someone annoyed about something. A mess of wrapping paper and people.

Then one day it was… quiet. Too quiet.
It felt empty, like something had been scooped out of the middle.

I could feel the grief under everything. The tree lights, the music, the memories. There was this heavy sense that something was missing and would never come back.

For a few years, I let that be the whole story.

I went through the motions. I smiled. I “made the best of it.” But inside, the holidays felt like a long, long hallway of loss.

So many people gone.
So many traditions gone.
So much of my old life, somewhere else.

At some point, though, I bumped right into the problem… my own wiring.

Staying in that heavy place for months is just not my natural state of being. I can sink deep occasionally, but I don’t like living there.

I finally had this quiet, tough-love talk with myself:

“If I don’t figure this out, every holiday from here on out will feel like this.”

So I did what I always do when life corners me. I got curious.

What if it’s true that this season will never look the way it used to… and there is still beauty here?

What if the point now is… different, but not gone?

The moment I decided to bend

I realized I had a choice.

I could keep measuring every holiday against the way it was when my kids were younger and everyone was still alive. That was one option.

Or I could bend with my life instead of bracing against it.

And I don’t say that lightly. Grief is real. Missing people you love is real. Mental health experts remind us that it’s completely normal to feel sad or off when traditions change or someone important is missing from the table.

You’re not “doing it wrong” if the holidays feel hard.

What changed for me wasn’t that I stopped missing anyone or the way things used to be. I just stopped letting the “missing” be the only voice in my head.

I started reorganizing my thoughts… almost like rearranging furniture.

Instead of “Everyone’s gone,” I tried, “Some are gone, and some are still here.”
Instead of “I’m alone,” I tried, “Who could I sit with this year?”
Instead of staring at what I’d lost, I practiced noticing what I still had.

Research actually backs this up. When people allow bits of positive emotion in during grief, they tend to do better over time. Those little moments of joy give the brain a break and help us refill the tank so we can keep going.

I didn’t know the science back then. I just knew I needed to stop letting my sadness drive the sleigh.

Letting people in again

One of my favorite memories from “the bending years” is the time I reached out to my friend Sylviana.

Her family has this big holiday tradition of getting together to make tamales. I’d heard about it for years. One year, I just decided to ask if I could tag along.

Let me tell you… it was chaos in the best way.

Flour and masa everywhere. Laughter. A few words of Spanish and a lot of spicy English (and maybe a little Sangria) bouncing off the walls.

Generations in one kitchen. My hands learning a rhythm that belonged to their family long before I showed up.

I walked out of that house smelling like meat and chiles and feeling so full… not just of food, but of life.

That one afternoon didn’t “fix” my grief. My mom was still gone. My sister was still gone. My kids still weren’t little anymore. But something shifted. Now I had a new memory, a new tradition I’d been invited into.

And here’s the thing… studies show that reaching out, helping others, or joining in with other people’s traditions actually helps our own mood. Small acts of kindness and connection reduce loneliness and lift our spirits in a very real way.

I could feel that in my bones that day in Sylviana’s mother’s kitchen.

I chose not to feel lonely

There were holidays when I wasn’t around my own family, because life did what life does.

In those years, I had to make a conscious choice:

I could sit alone and feed the story that I’d been forgotten… or I could decide I was not going to be lonely, even if I was physically alone.

Sometimes that looked like:

• Inviting someone else to my table
• Asking, “Can I join your family this year?” and humbling myself enough to actually show up
• Volunteering or dropping off food
• Bringing a simple gift and just being present wherever I was

Over time, I started to see this season differently. Not as a test I was failing because it didn’t look like the movies, but as a chance to be present to whatever love was still happening around me.

Love in a text from my kids.
Love in the neighbor who waved.
Love in the dogs snoring by the fireplace.
Love at a different table, with different faces, where I was still welcome.
Love without the traditional meal, gifts, or huge mess to clean up.

A few ideas if your heart is breaking this holiday

If any of this sounds like where you are, here are a few gentle, real-life starting places:

• Name the grief.
  Say it out loud: “I miss them.” “This used to look different.” You’re allowed to feel that. Reach out to a family member, friend, or even a professional.
• Let in one small good thing at a time.
  A walk. A cup of coffee in silence. A funny movie. Those small joys give your heart a rest and actually support healing.
• Borrow someone else’s tradition.
  Ask a friend, “What do you do for the holidays?” If it feels right, say, “Could I join you this year?” You’d be surprised how many would love to have you at their table.
• Create one tiny new ritual.
  Light a candle for the people you miss. Write them a letter. Make their favorite dish and tell a story about them. Mom’s delicious stuffing and Jimmy’s fluffy chocolate pie both evoke family stories.
• Refuse the “lonely” label.
  You might be alone. That’s real. But you don’t have to decide that means you are unlovable or forgotten. You’re not.

The holidays may never look the way they did when everyone was here, young, and stuffed into your house. Mine don’t.

But they also don’t have to be a yearly reminder of everything you’ve lost.

For me, they’ve become softer. Quieter, yes. But also more intentional. More present. More open to surprise.

I chose to bend.
You can, too.

And if no one has told you lately…
You are still loved. You are still invited to the table.

Love is ALL there is.

Diana