Who (or what) are you missing this holiday season?

The 2020 Christmas and Hanukkah season will be anything but normal—but one constant is that stories are always welcome!

There’s nothing “usual” about these December holidays. This pandemic year has taken us all for an unexpected ride. And while funny memes and abundant comfort food may ease our path, they do little to truly soothe our souls.

I recently shared a post on social media: A 2020 gift list for grievers curated by Allison Gilbert, author of the wonderful book Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive. One commenter noted how “everyone is grieving something this year.” Ah, yes, I thought—maybe that’s why the post resonated more deeply than usual with me.

And maybe that’s why I feel compelled to share a few resources for anyone who is, indeed, grieving during this season.

I am no stranger to holiday grief, having lost my mom unexpectedly just three days after Christmas in 2009, and two of the very personal posts below reveal my vulnerability at this time of year—as well as how story sharing about our deceased loved ones can be healing (dare I say, even joyful). I hope you can take a measure of comfort from my words.

The middle post offers up a list of memory-provoking questions designed to elicit holiday stories from a family member. While the original intent was to use them to guide a personal history interview with a loved one, again, this pandemic year may challenge that approach… So, if you are physically apart from your relatives, consider interviewing them from afar via Zoom (or a good old-fashioned phone call)—just remember to hit record on your smart phone or on a recorder to ensure you capture their memories for posterity! Another idea: Set aside some of your own time to write about your memories; these questions work just as well as writing prompts, after all.

Wherever you are, whomever you are missing, know that I am with you in spirit and wishing you peaceful and happy holidays!

Holiday grief: Find comfort & connection in memories

There is no timetable for grief, and sometimes our journeys of missing a lost loved one will be lifelong. The intensity of the grief we feel, though, is often magnified around the holidays—that sense of yearning for someone, of remembering them in a most visceral manner (through the tastes of the holiday food, the smells of an evergreen tree, say, or the feel of the hugs and stockings and warmth of the fire)...

Even amidst the joy, we may still feel sadness—and that’s not only okay, it is normal.

Here, I wanted to share two simple ideas—principles that have helped me on my healing path, and ones that I do believe can have a worthwhile impact on others.

Shared memories are a gift.

“Nothing makes me happier than someone asking me about my dad and what he was like,” writes Jahanvi Sardana, who lost her father to brain cancer in early 2017.

My own mother died thirteen years ago this month (three days after Christmas, to be precise), and I still feel exactly as Sardana does: The best gift—for Christmas or at any time of year—is simply, definitively, a shared memory of my mother.

I cherish when people share specific memories: That time my mother made everyone in the car laugh so hard that they had to pull away from the McDonald’s drive-thru because no one could talk through their guffaws. The time my mother hugged a coworker when he was having a bad day. The time she made spinach quiche for the elderly couple she saw at chemo every week. Or how, after wearing one blue sock and one black sock to the office, she combated her color blindness by having a friend help her label her laundry by color.

These are not monumental memories. They are moments.

But in their specificity, my mother comes alive for me.

I, too, feel connected to the person sharing the memory—they knew my mother, they experienced her. As I have so few people with whom to reminisce, these moments of sharing are even more precious to me when they happen.

“Keep your loved ones alive in your conversations, your memories, the way you live because end of life in no way translates to end of relationship,” Sardana says.

Remember that your recollections are a balm to the soul. Don’t ever refrain from sharing, or thinking that your memories may prove too painful; on the contrary, I can almost guarantee that your stories—no matter how inconsequential they may seem—are welcome to someone who has experienced a loss, whether that loss occurred yesterday or a decade ago.

Grief is another form of love.

At the memorial service for my grandmother, there were lots of sympathetic hugs. I remember those and the many words of support vaguely, through the fog of loss that shrouded me on that day.

One memory, though, is vivid: My friend Marc told me, “Your sadness is big because your love was big.” Those weren’t his exact words, but they capture his meaning, an idea that seemed new and comforting and obvious all at the same time. In his Marc way, he told me how lucky I was to have experienced such a loving relationship with my grandmother, and how my grief was proof of that love. What a revelation.

It was also evocative of my mother’s enduring philosophy, that we should be ever grateful. In that moment of loss, thanks to a friend’s words, I felt connected to my mom, and blessed to have had my grandmother in my life.

“The greater the love the greater the grief,” wrote C.S. Lewis, echoing my friend’s wisdom.

Jahanvi Sardana, who wrote about her father’s recent death, would agree, it seems: “Grief numbs your body, breaks your heart, and drains your veins, but grief also is just another form of love.”

Be patient with yourself, and gentle in your grief.

“Grief is tremendous, but love is bigger,” Cheryl Strayed says. “You are grieving because you loved truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of death. Allowing this into your consciousness will not keep you from suffering, but it will help you survive the next day.”

Yes. Yes.

Resources & more for those who are grieving

When I first wrote this article in 2017, Sheryl Sandberg’s book Option B—which she wrote in the wake of her husband’s death, when she feared she would never feel true joy again—was a bestseller, and I noted with gratitude that she had created a community around the idea of resilience in the face of adversity. The Option B website continues to offer ways to

• connect with people who understand

• immerse oneself in inspiring stories—or share your own

• get practical advice for talking about loss and other challenges.

More recently, I have been listening to Anderson Cooper’s thoughtful, inspiring podcast called “All There Is” in which he vulnerably explores grief as he goes through his mother’s things after her death. I highly recommend listening, whether your loss is fresh or years behind you. I related to so very much he and his guests had to say; I think you will, too.

Related Reading:

The Healing Power of Remembrance: “The prescription for joy and healing after loss is to remember.”

Mommy & Me: How a struggle to tell my mother’s whole story turned into a more intimate portrait of love.

Notes from a Funeral: Sharing memories about lost loved ones to heal—and why we don't honor our families through story sharing now.

Keeping memories alive: How tribute books can create a lasting legacy of your deceased family member

This post, originally published on December 19, 2017, has been updated on November 30, 2022.

“Stories are everything.”

During an evening discussion focused on grief and resilience, one theme continued to pop up: the importance of stories and story sharing.

The noted panelists at the New York Open Center, including award-winning journalist Soledad O'Brien and noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., opened up about their own family histories, personal loss, and the things that helped them heal. And amidst the many nuggets of wisdom they passed on to the audience, quite a few of their prescriptions for resilience were applicable at any time in our lives, not only during a period of grieving.

Here are two huge benefits of storytelling that were highlighted during this dynamic conversation.

Stories help us feel connected.

I remember asking my grandmother where we were from. “America,” she would say. Before that? “It doesn’t matter.”

I once asked her something about her school years; she teared up, but remained silent. “I did not have a happy childhood.” Case closed.

My grandparents’ past was a complete mystery to me. And I am not alone.

While some kids grew up with tales of “remember when” and “when I was little…” around the dinner table, many others—often children of immigrants—were told little to nothing about their family’s narrative before they were born.

Soledad O’Brien, whose father came from Australia and her mother from Cuba, says her parents both decidedly left the past behind. “We’ll just start anew,” she says was their prevailing attitude. Like my family, O’Brien’s didn’t talk about the past at all. “Repressing things is a very solid strategy!” she said with a laugh.

Of course, it’s a strategy for coping and, yes, beginning anew. But apart from fueling that fresh start, the decision to bury family history—so common among immigrants in the first half of the 20th century—does nothing to connect the next generation to their past.

O’Brien was a Season Three guest on Finding Your Roots, and she says that she derived great value from learning more about her family history. “As you’re trying to figure out yourself, these threads begin to matter more and more,” she said.

“At the time, I was feeling insecure as an entrepreneur,” O’Brien said; but recalling her family’s history of perseverance, and drawing from that history of strength, “felt heartening, and emotional. There is this story that I’m connected to.”

Those stories helped O’Brien “feel somehow rooted to a place.” The stories made her feel connected. “Even if you don’t know you have a gaping hole, you do,” O’Brien said.

Stories bring genealogy to life.

DNA drove the original idea for Gates’s previous genealogical series, African American Lives, which explored race, roots, and identity with guests including Oprah Winfrey, Ben Carson, and Chris Rock. Gates would watch his subjects stare at new genealogical documents; they would read the words, but as he says, it wasn’t the pages of data that moved them. “They broke down and cried over the stories,” he recalls.

And so it is the stories that take center stage in his current PBS series, Finding Your Roots, whose fourth season, currently in production, will air this fall (guests include Larry David, Bernie Sanders, Amy Shumer, Ted Danson, and Paul Rudd).

“Every society has a genealogy tradition,” Gates said at the Open Center event.

“You are, in part, the sum of your ancestors” Gates said in the Washington Post, and researching one’s background helps people figure out “how you became uniquely you.”

“What you get from a genealogist is a binder of documents; you don’t get stories,” Gates said. “You have to translate that stuff into stories, and I’m very proud to be able to do that.”

Often guests on Finding Your Roots hire the team of genealogists from the show to continue their family research privately. They want to flesh out their family trees even further—and to “meet” more family members...discover their stories.

What is revealed can be life-changing to the guests, Gates said.

His own most treasured family heirloom remains to this day the one that jump-started his interest in family history: a photograph of his great-great grandmother Jane Gates. “It’s precious to me.” That connection with his own roots—Gates says he passes by and looks at the photo every day in his home—“gives me solidity and stability. It makes me feel good.”

And maybe that’s the best part of sharing stories, after all: Stories make us feel good.

As Soledad O’Brien said, “Stories are everything.”

Related reading:

• There are plenty of reasons to share family stories, from raising resilient kids to helping understand oneself.
• No one will tell your life stories but you. Start small by saving family photos & preserving stories so you create a lasting, meaningful legacy, one step at a time.
• Interested in working with a personal historian who can interview you or a family member to elicit & shape your stories for a book? Let's chat.