Why is being a griever so difficult over Thanksgiving?

The November 2024 issue of my longer, monthly grief newsletter

Nov 28, 2024

Welcome to the November 2024 issue of The Grief Letters with Claire, a monthly-ish newsletter about living alongside grief and death. Sharing this space with you is such an honor. For those who have been here awhile, my newsletter and other writings about grief now live on Substack. You don’t need to do anything to keep receiving these and you can always manage your subscription as it feels right.

In Ask Grief, we’ll get to hear why Thanksgiving can be so difficult for grievers. In Journal Prompts, you’ll be invited to reflect on your longings and griefs this holiday season. This month’s Grief Resource is a practice to invite grief and gratitude to live alongside rather than in opposition to one another. And finally, save the date for December’s Grief Church: Sorrows of the World.

Thanks for joining me as I attempt to voice all that grief means to me, all that grief can mean to you, and as I try to honor the sacred practice of grief tending.

Ask Grief: Why is Being a Griever so Difficult Over Thanksgiving?

Dear Grief,

Thanksgiving approaches and I am once again faced with this knot in my stomach as I think about celebrating this holiday. Why does this happen every year? Why is it so hard?

Sincerely,

Not-So-Thankful

Dear Not-So-Thankful,

Oh darling, you’re not alone. The holidays are often presented as these one-note events: HAPPINESS or THANKFULNESS or FAMILY when for most people, they are complex symphonies of regret, longing, shame, and hope. There are many reasons that this holiday, in particular, feels so off to you as a griever. Some of those reasons could be:

As a griever, side-stepping or ignoring the griefs of others—whole communities, in fact—feels intolerable. What this holiday asks is for you to participate in a great grief forgetting as you feast and try to celebrate on a day that for the Indigenous peoples of the US, marks the beginning of unimaginable injustice and violence that continues to this day. Being a griever makes it hard to go along with this kind of forgetting since you now have solidarity with all broken hearts.
This holiday often is a blending of spaces and families, an intergenerational way of being that is almost extinct in the Overculture of the US. What this means is that you have little practice in holding the tension and tenderness of intergenerational dialogue. Without such practice, the charge in these spaces can be almost overwhelming as you collectively hold your breaths, wondering who’s going to say what, when.
There is a strong and yet deeply false belief that grief and gratitude are at odds or that to hold one means the necessary absence of the other. So a holiday focused on gratitude can feel really unwelcoming to a griever. Who among you, the broken-hearted, hasn’t been bright-sided at one point of another when naming your grief? This impulse to “look on the bright side” or specifically to ask others to do so in the face of their pain and loss is a weaponizing of gratitude. To be filled with joy and gratitude is a life-sustaining force. On the other hand, to be asked to hide or minimize your pain in order to preform gratitude is to make a weapon out of medicine. No wonder you are weary, dear.
An annual harvest gathering has been part of human culture for all of your history. This holiday, then, touches into the basic human need for belonging and has become a symbol of love and acceptance within your community. The often unspoken longing in this holiday is, Do my people love me? Do I belong? That’s probably why this holiday has taken on an almost religious devotion; humans yearn for belonging and even though your lived experience with this holiday often falls deeply short of meeting this desire, it’s often the best you have (for now).
There is no place set at the table for grief.
To grieve, in most contexts, is isolating and lonely. As a griever, your honest answer to “How are things going” from a well-meaning (or not-so-welling-meaning) relative might be, “Pretty terrible, I’m crying all the time.” So instead you say, “Not bad, you?” And your broken heart swallows it’s wails. That’s lonely business.
Grief is never singular or exclusively personal. When you grieve, it connects you to all your previous losses as well as the griefs in your lineages and the wider cultures you’re a part of. To grieve is to be broken open and that’s just not always a welcome state to arrive in for a meal.
Grief leaves you fragile as you touch into the shocking precarity of life. And most people? They are not safe harbors for this necessary fragility.

Who are the grievers in your life? The people managing chronic illnesses of body or mind, the ones in recovery, the ones for whom Life has been one blow after another? What if, for a moment, you imagined feasting with them instead? Take one long slow breath in and one long slow breath out. You are loved, you are known, your griefs are welcome here.

Take such good care of your broken heart, especially in this season.

Love always,

Grief

Journal Prompts

I suggest lighting a candle and taking a few grounding breaths before writing on these:

Create a harvest gathering for your heart: who’s invited (living or dead, fictional characters and more than human beings welcome), what are you eating, what are you talking about?
This Thanksgiving, I wish…
What I really mean is…

Grief Resource: A Practice for Your Table or Your Heart

Rather than performative gratitude this season, consider inviting in a practice that reminds us we can hold many things at one time, that many things can be true at once. This practice is called One Rose, One Thorn, One Bud and it goes like this:

One Rose: Share one celebration from this week, something that felt like a success or something that was genuinely delightful.
One Thorn: Share one thing that hurt this week or one challenge you faced.
One Bud: Share one thing you’re looking forward to next week.

Grief Offering

SAVE THE DATE! December’s Grief Church theme is, again, Sorrows of the World for the griefs we carry for this world in crisis. This type of grief can feel overwhelming: the grief we have for communities we care about, the natural world, and the future. This type of grief, of all the griefs, is best held in community. We’ll meet Sunday, December 15th from 2:00-3:30PM CST via Zoom. Grief Church is freely offered. Registration link: https://forms.gle/PDNkydP55rSe2Gah9

What is Grief Church? Many faith and cultural practices in the modern world ignore the role of grief tending to our well-being so Grief Church will serve as such a space. The practices and liturgy in Grief Church are meant to be incorporated into any faith and/or wellness practice participants already engage in. Think of this like a sacred container for your grief and a time to be with other grievers. We trust grief in Grief Church so feel free to bring your tears and leave your advice/judgments at the door; we believe in presence, not perfection. Each month there will be a theme that will connect the poems, songs, and art shared along with a brief grief message. There will be time for reflection and sharing in a comment-free space.

A Reminder: What I Believe About This Grief Space/Newsletter

I believe in tending to grief, not healing grief. I don’t believe grief ever “heals” the way our body heals from a cold, for instance. Grief remains. So, we tend to it.
I don’t believe any specific grief is any more important or sad or valid than another. This space is for all the griefs.
This is a space for openness and wonder, for acknowledging the precarity of being human. You will not find religious, political, or cultural allegiances here. Right and wrong, good and bad in the context of grief is meaningless. Grief is, we are.

In grief,

Claire