The Empty Seat Still Has a Story; Honoring Our Losses During the Holidays Without Losing Ourselves
The holidays are often imagined as a time of warmth, full of laughter, connection, nostalgia, and that glowing, movie-montage sense of togetherness. But when there has been a loss, especially during the first holiday season without someone you love, the atmosphere changes. The lights can feel too bright. The music may cut deeper than expected. Familiar traditions suddenly ache. While the world continues celebrating, your heart may feel like it is attending a different ceremony altogether, one shaped by absence, memory, and longing.
This is the quiet paradox of grief during the holidays. Everyone else is gathering, but someone you love is missing from the circle. If you are navigating grief during this season, you may find additional support and reflection in our Wellness Corner, where we explore emotional well-being, healing, and care throughout life’s transitions.
And yet, in that empty chair, in the untouched stocking, the unused plate, or the silent text thread that no longer lights up your phone, there is still a story. There is a legacy. There is love that has not stopped speaking.
This season is not about replacing the empty seat.
It is about honoring it.
Grief During the Holidays Is Its Own Kind of Weight
The holiday season has a way of magnifying everything we feel. When grief is present, the absence of someone you love can feel louder in decorated rooms and at full dinner tables. Expectations to feel cheerful or grateful may clash with the reality of heartbreak. Traditions can bring comfort one moment and feel unbearable the next. Even well-meaning comments like, “They’d want you to be happy” or “At least you still have family” can sting more than intended.
The world moves quickly during the holidays, but grief does not follow the same schedule. It has its own rhythm, its own timing, and its own way of showing up.
If this is your first holiday without someone, you might notice a heaviness settling in even before events begin. There may be pressure to perform joy for others, a desire to cancel plans altogether, or a grief that arrives in waves, sometimes quietly, sometimes without warning. You may even feel guilt in moments when laughter or peace unexpectedly finds you.
None of this is wrong. It is human. It is love with nowhere new to go.
Grief Is Not the Opposite of Gratitude
We are often taught, directly or indirectly, that grief cancels out celebration, that feeling thankful means you should not still feel sad. But grief does not erase love. It proves that love existed.
It is possible to feel grateful for the time you had and heartbroken that it ended. These emotions are not in competition with each other; they can live in the same breath. When we allow grief to be present instead of forcing it into silence, we give ourselves permission to heal in a way that honors our truth, not the expectations placed on us by the season or by others.
The Many Forms of Holiday Loss
While this season may center on the first holiday without someone, loss is not one-note. It can take many forms, each carrying its own weight.
You may be grieving a parent while trying to carry traditions alone for the first time. You may be navigating the unimaginable pain of child loss, wondering how the world can continue as if everything is the same. You may be missing a partner who once shared every ritual with you, or grieving someone who is still alive but no longer accessible due to estrangement, addiction, illness, or dementia.
Some people grieve the rupture of family traditions, the absence of chosen family, or the collective grief of living in a world that feels increasingly heavy. All of these losses matter. All of them deserve space.
The First Holiday Without Them
“The firsts” are often the hardest. The first birthday without their voice. The first silence where there used to be a call. The first traditions interrupted. The first holiday morning that feels unfamiliar and disorienting.
It is not only about remembering someone you lost. It is about realizing that the world now rotates differently. You may find yourself looking for them in every room, measuring time as before and after, or wondering how you are supposed to “do the holidays” now. There can be a quiet fear that grief will spill out in front of others, or a sense that you no longer recognize yourself in this new version of life.
Let this truth land gently:
You are not doing grief wrong.
You are doing love right.
The Pressure to “Be Okay”, And Why It Hurts
Our culture often expects grief to be quiet, tidy, and time bound. The holidays amplify this pressure. Questions like “Are you doing better?” or encouragements to “try to enjoy yourself” may be offered with care, but they can feel dismissive of the depth of what you are carrying.
You do not miss them because you lack solutions; you miss them because they were not replaceable.
Your heart is not resisting healing; your heart is remembering meaning.
Honoring the Empty Seat Without Drowning in It
Honoring someone you’ve lost does not require grand gestures. Often, it is the gentle, intentional moments that bring the most comfort. Creating a small moment of recognition, like lighting a candle before dinner, sharing a brief memory, saying their name out loud, or hanging an ornament just for them, can soften grief by giving it a place to land.
Setting the table with love rather than pain can also be meaningful. A memorial seat does not have to feel tragic. A flower, a handwritten note, or their favorite treat placed nearby can acknowledge their presence without overwhelming the moment.
Stories matter too. Not the dramatic ones, but the human ones—the burnt cookies, the unexpected snowstorm, the sound of their laughter. These memories invite connection and, at times, even gentle laughter. In its own way, laughter can feel like a form of resurrection.
Some people find comfort in wearing or displaying something that belonged to their loved one: a scarf, a watch, a recipe card, a framed piece of handwriting. Grief often lives in the same details where love once lived.
Others choose symbolic gestures—writing a holiday card to them, playing their favorite music, watching the movie they loved, or cooking the dish they perfected. Love does not end. It evolves.
When Grief Shows Up in Unexpected Ways
Grief does not always look like tears. Sometimes it appears as irritability, emotional numbness, over-busyness, avoidance, or a desire to disappear. At times, it may feel like nothing at all. These are not failures. They are survival responses searching for rest.
Boundaries as a Form of Grief Care
Caring for yourself during the holidays may mean setting boundaries that feel unfamiliar. You are allowed to attend gatherings for only a short time, to decline conversations you are not ready for, to ask for quiet mornings, or to change how you approach gift-giving. You may even choose to start a new tradition altogether.
Protecting your peace is not a rejection of love; it is an act of self-respect.
Supporting Children and Families Through Grief
Children often grieve differently than adults. They may move fluidly between play and sadness, ask unexpected questions, or seek comfort in routine rather than conversation. They do not need perfect answers; they need presence and permission to remember out loud.
Families, too, may find themselves rebuilding traditions. You are not required to replicate the past. You can keep what comforts you, retire what hurts, and create rituals that feel true to who you are now.
Traditions are not sacred because they are old; they become sacred when they hold meaning.
Grieving Someone Who Is Still Alive
Some losses are harder to name. Estrangement, illness, dementia, or addiction can create a grief that has no clear ending. The person is still here, but the relationship you knew is not.
This kind of ambiguous loss offers no closure, no timeline, and often no cultural permission to mourn. And yet, your heart is grieving a reality that changed without your consent. That grief deserves recognition too.
Grief Does Not Expire With the Season
The calendar will eventually turn, but grief does not end on January second. What often changes is not the presence of grief, but the way it is carried. Grief softens when it is witnessed instead of hidden, shared instead of performed, expressed instead of edited, and honored instead of rushed.
Healing is not forgetting; it is remembering without collapsing.
The Empty Seat Still Has a Story
This holiday season, grief does not ask you to be okay. It simply asks, “Will you remember me gently?” When you do, you keep love alive. You transform pain into legacy. You affirm that love has a permanence grief cannot erase.
Yes, the seat may be empty, but the story is not over.
If This Season Feels Too Heavy
Support can take many forms—therapy, coaching, shared conversation, new rituals, or even simply reading words that feel like recognition. If this piece touched the place in you that aches, there is space here for your story too.
You are allowed to grieve.
You are allowed to heal.
You are allowed to do both at once.
