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Missing a loved one this holiday season?
Dawn Roode offers up four suggestions for further reading (and listening) for anyone who, like her, is missing a friend or family member during the holidays.
As families celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas in the coming days, we can get caught up in the hustle and bustle, in expectations of mirth and traditions honored… For many of us, though, grief has a way of underpinning everything during this season, even amidst the joy and carols.
Those who have followed my journey for a while or who know me personally understand that loss is a theme I revisit often. I do so because the loss of three loved ones—my mother, in particular—has changed me as a person. The absence of my mom permeates my life. And while there is sadness, and there is a sense of longing—especially during the holidays—I have also gained much; I have become a new me in the wake of her loss. And I feel compelled to help others remember their own lost loved ones, to use story and memory as ways to honor those they have lost, to help them heal—even if it’s a (very) little bit at a time…
But sometimes there is nothing that will make those stabbing moments of grief go away. And maybe we’re meant to feel them. I find some consolation in connecting with others who may feel similarly; of reading others’ experiences with loss and holiday grief. And so I thought this week I would share with you a few things that have resonated with me, and a few I have written myself; I hope one or more of these will help you feel seen anew, will connect you with positive memories of the loved one you are grieving (whether they died yesterday or three decades ago), and will help you find moments of solace and light when grief seems like a shadow darkening all else.
4 ideas for finding solace on your holiday grief journey
personal reflections
I wrote this piece in 2017. I was missing my mom fiercely as Mother’s Day approached. Something compelled me to share some especially personal words on Facebook (and I am not one who is typically vulnerable—or even active, really—on Facebook). That act connected me in a most beautiful and unexpected way with a community of others who felt similar grief—and the bonus these days is that it comes up in my feed periodically as a memory. Rereading my words from that day makes me feel closer to my mom, and gives me hope when I need it. May it do the same for you:
“Wish You Were Here, Mom”
“Because a number of people expressed gratitude for my words—for recognizing my prolonged grief as their own, for glimpsing something universal in my very individual experience—I decided to share the post in this broader setting…”
being there for others who are grieving
What if someone else in your circle is experiencing grief? In a world where rituals around dying are disappearing, where talking to someone about loss feels almost taboo, I find it can be helpful to have some concrete ideas on how to be there for another who is grieving. Take a look at this story for those ideas—and know that some of them may help you, too:
A Balm for Holiday Grief
A few ideas for sharing memories of someone who has died…
LISTENING IN, living on
As an avid podcast listener, I was thrilled to stumble upon the first episode of Anderson Cooper’s podcast “All There Is” back in September 2022. He started recording while going through his late mother’s journals and keepsakes, as well as things left behind by his father and brother, narrating his experiences—and emotions—as he went. The result is a vulnerable, human, necessary meditation on grief (including a series of compelling interviews) that had me feeling seen—and wanting to hug Cooper and others walking through grief. I highly recommend giving it a listen (as for me, I will be revisiting episode two, where Stephen Colbert joins Cooper for a profound conversation).
As of December 2025, Cooper continues to explore the theme of grief in this podcast, and his generosity of spirit with his community of listeners—he says he has listened to thousands of audio messages and read tens of thousands of DMs, and that he is moved by every single one—is powerfully moving. “Listening to your messages, hearing your voices, learning the names of your lost loved ones,” he says, “has been incredibly profound. It’s made me feel less alone in my grief, and I hope these messages you’re about to hear help you feel less alone, as well.” I recommend this episode where he reads from some of those messages.
“All There Is”
I have recommended this podcast to many people this year. Anderson Cooper shares “a series of emotional and moving conversations about the people we lose, the things they leave behind, and how to live on—with loss, with laughter, and with love.”
FINDING COMMUNITY
In the wake of my mother’s death in 2009, I desperately sought community and a safe space for sharing my grief. It wasn’t easy. I eventually found a grief support group in my neighborhood in Park Slope, Brooklyn; it met at the nearby hospital and was a balm to my soul and frazzled nerves—that is, for the two sessions we met. Because it was run by a volunteer and there was no funding or outside support, it disbanded as quickly as I had discovered it. But many of us (a wildly diverse group—all ages, religions, and colors with unique experiences of recent death) had exchanged numbers. So I proposed we meet without a moderator at a local public place…and every single person showed up. That community was necessary for us then. If I hadn’t moved to another state, I would probably still be organizing our make-shift grief support get-togethers.
This year I discovered grief specialist Barri Leiner Grant via Instagram and extend an invitation to you to follow her, too, especially if you, like I was in 2009, are craving community around your loss. She offers memory circles, grief resources, a write-to-heal support group, and beautiful doses of inspiration through her work.
The Memory Circle
Barri Leiner Grant says that grief tending—“time dedicated to your release and relief”—is the foundational grounding of her philosophy. See if the tools she provides can help you maintain a meaningful connection with your lost loved one.
This blog post, originally written in December 2022, has been updated with new content on December 8, 2025.
Wish you were here, Mom
When Mother’s Day is hard due to feelings of loss, allowing ourselves to linger in our memories may help (and, yes, hurt). A tribute made in grief, and love.
When Mother’s Day approaches on the calendar, I get a little anxious. No, I’m not worried my husband and son will attempt to make me breakfast in bed (though I wouldn’t complain if they did); rather, I worry how I will balance the grief that simmers just under the surface at all times at having lost my own mother with the unadulterated joy and pride I feel in being a mother myself.
I know I am not alone in feeling my grief bubble to the surface on days such as this. At an event a couple of years ago I heard Henry Louis Gates, Jr., describe his grief at losing his mother as “still as raw and as fresh, almost, as it was when it happened”—in 1987. “If I let myself go there,” he said, “I can start crying in about two seconds. It’s like a stream flowing under this carpet—it’s right there, and I can tap into that grief at any moment.”
Ah, yes. Me, too.
When remembering lost loved ones hurts
I used to love browsing the Mother’s Day cards in the drug store, finding one (or two or three) that captured my heart for my mom—now, however, that aisle is a trigger for a feeling of aloneness. That hollow sense that descended upon me immediately after my mother died returns, and I momentarily feel like my skin is made of eggshell.
I don’t allow myself to linger in those moments (self protection, no doubt), but I have learned that if I allow them to prompt me to visit with my memories for a while, I am the better for it.
When friends or family lose someone they love, I always urge them, at some point, to let their memories provide comfort. To relish the stories they hear from others who knew their loved one. To keep their loved one’s spirit alive. On occasions such as Mother’s Day, I must remind myself anew of this advice.
A few years ago, on what would have been my mother’s 70th birthday, I shared an unusually long update on Facebook about what I was feeling. The responses both public and private from my circle of friends were overwhelmingly supportive, as close to a warm hug as I could get from social media.
Because a number of people expressed gratitude for my words that day—for recognizing my prolonged grief as their own, for glimpsing something universal in my very individual experience—I decided to share the post in this broader setting.
For all of us who have a conflicted relationship with Mother’s Day, know this:
Our mothers live on in our memories, as joyful and as painful as that may be.
Facebook reflections
From my March 16, 2017, Facebook post:
Today my mom would have been 70. It’s hard for me to fathom. And yet how easy it would be to let myself go there—to imagine that she’s been with us these past eight years, grandmother-ing [my son], supporting and guiding and loving me on weekend overnights and hours-long phone calls, making [my husband] chocolate cream pie.
I don’t let my mind go there, ever. I don’t usually imagine her in my kitchen browning oxtails for barley soup. Or sitting on the floor near our fireplace Christmas morning, relishing in her grandson’s joy over opening his piles of presents. I never think of her sipping tea in her bathrobe at my kitchen table, in my home she never ultimately saw. I especially never allow myself to feel her arms tightening around me in a meaningful hug.
My mind never goes there because my heart couldn’t take it. It would be overbearing, distracting.
There are moments that come unbidden, though, thoughts that my mind could not squash because they are made exclusively of feelings, that simply hollow me out some days: When instincts alone move my hand to hover over the phone to connect with her. When I realize anew she is gone (I had not forgotten, exactly, just not remembered, right then, that the worst had happened).
I would have guessed eight years ago that those times would have come when something sad or even a tiny bit bad had happened—when I needed her. But I would have been wrong.
Every time I have been so in the moment that I have *not remembered* that she is gone—every time—has been when I wanted to share my joy with her.
Those who knew her will recognize that, while she was one of the most supportive, least judgmental, and most generous souls to have crossed their paths (oh, the stories I could tell!), she was also gracious and grateful beyond measure—and sharing joy with her always multiplied one’s own joy.
I lost my mom when my only son was just three months old, and it was an unexpected blow to bear. And yet it happened in the midst of the most substantial, indescribable joy I had ever experienced: motherhood. I have been blessed with many great things in the years since, and I am forever grateful (a lesson learned well from her). If only I could share those joys with her. If only I could express my love for her, impossibly amplified since becoming a mom myself. If only I could imagine her as my friend walking this earthly path with me, still.
I don’t let my mind go there, not most days. But today, on what would have been her 70th birthday, I will. I am going to imagine, for just today, what it would have been like. xoxo
And on Mother’s Day, if you, too, have lost your mom, may you join me in “going there”—ruminating on our moms’ lives and love, visiting with their memory and spirit…
Related Reading
Holiday Grief: We may yearn for a lost loved one even more during the holidays, but know that shared memories are a balm to the soul, and that grief is another form of love.
Allison Gilbert shares a multitude of specific ways to keep lost loved ones’ memories alive—to actively remember them—in her book, Passed and Present.
Notes from a Funeral: Reflections from a funeral on remembrance and grief: sharing memories about lost loved ones to heal—and why we don't honor our families through story sharing now.
See how the first legacy book I ever created honored my mother—and eventually inspired Modern Heirloom Books.
NOTE:
The introduction to this post has been updated for timeliness on May 12, 2023. (Original post from May 9, 2017, included details about workshops and talks that have since passed.)
Notes from a funeral
Reflections from a funeral on remembrance & grief: sharing memories about lost loved ones to heal—and why we don't honor our families through story sharing now.
When a loved one dies, the world around us ceases to exist for a time. We may post an obituary to Facebook and share beloved photo memories of the deceased, but we are going through the motions. Moving forward, as we must. There is a haze about our very existence.
I have found that it is in the months after the sympathy cards cease coming, after friends and family drop by to check on our welfare, that the weight of grief settles.
Losing a loved one
This week I attended the wake and funeral of a beloved family matriarch. Gloria was my in-law, ever-present at family gatherings big and small over the decade since I had joined her extended family. I knew her as a doting great-grandmother, as a grandmother with a surprising sense of humor, and as a compatriot to my own Nanny when she was alive.
But I learned more about her as an individual in the past three days since she passed than I had ever known before.
There is something wonderful about that, and something equally sad.
It’s not a revelation to notice that our loved ones’ stories are often buried treasures. It does sadden me, though, to notice again and again that often those stories remain buried.
At the end of a life, we are able to look back at said life in its entirety. It is natural and wondrous to talk of the milestones that marked a person’s journey.
Why don’t we reflect on our lives while we are living them, though?
The simplest and best answer I have is that we take our time together for granted. We live in the present moment—as well we should!—and flow with the fast-moving currents of time. We go from one baby shower to Sunday family dinner to the next, wielding a camera and smiling as the kids play, chatting over coffee and dessert before we head home and get invited to do it all over again soon.
The gift of remembrance
We may feel abundant love, even great gratitude, for our family members. We know them as they relate to us, but less often do we ask about them as a person unto themselves! What did Grandma do before she became a mother? What were her parents like? What games did she play as a child? Did she get good grades in school?
The nature of family gatherings changes for a while after a loved one dies. The person’s absence is palpable; they should be here. Our supreme awareness of their absence invokes sadness, for sure, but it prompts storytelling, too. Memories of even the smallest moments, once shared, provide comfort and connection. Stories are a balm to our bruised hearts.
In the aftermath of loss, we are surrounded by others who share our grief. We are not shy about remembering—out loud—our loved one. We tell stories, and relish when we hear stories we had not heard before. When we learn something new, no matter how small, about our deceased loved one, we grasp it tightly, cherish it as a most special gift.
We seek, and find, connection in those also connected to our loved one.
Remembering, always
During his eulogy of the deceased, the priest thanked the gathered family members for “sharing Gloria with us.” This phrasing struck me: She was a faithful church attendant and community volunteer; she had friends from all stages of her life; and yet, she belonged to her family.
For those who knew and loved Gloria, may your memories of her continue to provide comfort and even joy amidst the gaping sadness of her loss. Don’t stop sharing those stories.
Your perpetual remembrance is a celebration of her love and life. Be strengthened by her spirit, and know that you are her legacy.
And for everyone who loves someone: Ask them questions. Discover their stories. Now, while you can share in the emotions and relive the memories together. Celebrate your loved ones’ lives while they are being lived as much as you undoubtedly will when your loved ones are gone.
Remember, celebrate, and connect. Create a legacy together.
Learn about our Write Your Life course, providing memory prompts, writing guidance and a dose of inspiration to anyone who wants to preserve their stories now.