Photo by Ylanite Koppens

When we say “happy holidays” to each other, are we really happy? Or are we performing happiness while shoving down waves of grief, sadness, and loss that inevitably surface during this season?

This might seem like a strange place to start a series about having happier holidays, but stay with me. Because what I’ve learned—both as a licensed mental health counselor and through my own experience with maternal loss—is that the pathway to genuine holiday joy runs directly through our grief.

Why Grief Shows Up During the Holidays

Grief operates on cycles, and for many of us, the holidays trigger one of the most predictable waves. Whether you’ve experienced recent acute loss or you’re navigating the anniversary of a death, the holiday season has a way of highlighting absence.

For me, it’s the lack of relationship with my mother—someone who absolutely lit up during Christmas. Her decorations were legendary: candles in every window, themed mantles throughout our old house, garlands and traditions that made the season magical. Now, when the advent calendar she still sends my daughters arrives each year, it’s a reminder of the relationship we don’t have and the hole that exists where she used to be.

Maybe for you it’s different. Maybe you lost someone around this time. Maybe it’s the gathering of family that stirs up complicated feelings about who’s missing or what’s changed. Maybe it’s raising your own family now and realizing how different it looks from what you imagined or experienced growing up.

Whatever your grief looks like, it’s here. And ignoring it won’t make your holidays happier.

The Truth About Selective Emotional Numbing

Here’s what we need to understand: you cannot selectively numb emotions.

When we shove down, ignore, or repress the hard feelings—grief, sadness, anger—we literally depress our nervous system. We go into a shutdown state that doesn’t just block access to unpleasant emotions. It blocks access to all emotions, including the ones we desperately want to feel: joy, contentment, ease, connection.

This is why we might turn to coping mechanisms like alcohol, sugar, or shopping during the holidays. We think we’re feeling happy, but we’re actually just manipulating our neurochemistry to experience an illusion of happiness. And the aftermath? We often feel even worse.

As Gabor Maté says: “We don’t need to feel better. We need to get better at feeling.”

The 90-Second Wave: How Emotions Actually Work

Here’s the science that changed everything for me: when you allow yourself to fully feel an emotion without resistance, it has about a 90-second shelf life.

Think of grief like a wave in the ocean. When it hits, you have two choices. You can resist it, tense up, and get pulled into the undertow—feeling like you’ll never come back. Or you can ride it, knowing that like all waves, it will crest and subside.

The fear is that if we let ourselves feel the grief, we’ll get stuck there. We’ll ruin the holidays. We’ll never stop crying. But actually, the opposite is true. When we give emotions permission to move through us (energy in motion), they move like a train through a tunnel.

It’s the resistance that keeps us stuck.

Three Steps to Riding the Grief Wave This Holiday Season

Step One: Normalize All Emotions

You are human. Humans experience approximately 87 different emotions—some pleasant, some unpleasant. This isn’t a character flaw or a sign something is wrong with you. It’s biology. If you’ve experienced loss, of course you have grief. If you’re navigating complicated family dynamics, of course you have anger or sadness.

Emotions are information. They carry wisdom. And they’re all healthy.

Step Two: Create Safe Spaces to Feel

Find places where you can let yourself fully experience whatever comes up: your car, a closet, the bathroom, or with a trusted friend or therapist. Set a timer for 90 seconds or play a song. Give yourself full permission to have the ugly cry, to scream, to let your body intuitively process what it needs to process.

If you’re feeling emotions in front of your children, use discernment. Big rage probably isn’t appropriate for little kids. But tears? Sadness? These can be healthy teaching moments: “Mom is feeling really sad right now. I’m okay, and I’m just taking a moment to be with my sadness. We all feel sad sometimes.”

Step Three: Connect With Your Grief and Others Who Understand

Journal with your grief. Let it have a voice. And if possible, connect with others who truly understand loss—not necessarily the exact same loss, but people who know what it’s like when grief hits unexpectedly.

Some of my closest friendships have formed with other women who’ve experienced profound loss. There’s something deeply comforting about being with someone who just gets it, who won’t try to fix you or rush you through it.

Setting Boundaries to Protect Your Tender Heart

Finally, consider what boundaries you might need this season. Is there someone who particularly triggers your grief? A tradition that feels too raw? A day that needs extra tenderness?

Maybe you need to communicate with your partner that you’ll need extra support around a certain ritual. Maybe you need to step away from a particular gathering. Maybe you need to give yourself permission to skip something entirely.

This isn’t avoidance—it’s wise self-care.

The Paradox of a Happier Holiday

Here’s the truth I’ve learned as both a therapist and a cycle-breaker in my own family: if we can’t be with the hard stuff, we can’t access the good stuff.

Real happiness doesn’t come from pretending grief doesn’t exist or numbing ourselves through the season. It comes from developing the skill to ride all the waves—the pleasant and the unpleasant—with presence and self-compassion.

This holiday season, I’m not asking you to be happy all the time. I’m inviting you to get better at feeling all of it. Because that’s where genuine joy lives—not in the absence of grief, but in our capacity to be fully human with all of our emotions.

That’s the foundation for a truly happier holiday.