I’ve been writing lately about a loss I’ve been going through, and I know many of you can relate. You’ve had your own losses or are maybe even going through one now. And when we’re experiencing a loss, there are a lot of uncomfortable feelings that can come up—anger and sadness being the big ones. So we often resist them. But in my long history of dealing with loss, trauma, and the big feelings that can come with simply being a sensitive person in a world that doesn’t always support that, I’ve learned that one of the absolute most powerful things that you can do to resolve uncomfortable feelings is to feel them. Just feel them. Just let them be there.

The holiday season is wonderful in so many ways. We get to see family, take a break from work, eat lots of delicious food, and end the year in style. But precisely because the holidays are about family and tradition, this is also a common time for grief to cycle back up. We think of the people who aren’t present, the people we aren’t going to see. We think of the traditions we wish we could share. As another year comes to an end, as much as we are thinking of New Year’s resolutions, we might also be thinking back to what the last year meant to us and what we lost.

This year, loss has been a major theme, not only in terms of the mortality of a long pandemic season but also in terms of our everyday routines and the many things we took for granted before. As the days get shorter and darker, we are moving into the fall and winter seasons, which are natural times to think about grief and loss.