Holiday Grief Myths Part 1: Don’t Be Offended if We Don’t Want To Join Your Family For the Holidays
Tis the season to remind everyone I’m an orphan…Fa La La La La La La La….awwwww!
Hope you enjoyed my little musical parody for this blog post because I’ve been holding onto that dark AF joke for years- specifically since I was doing videos about grief! I never got around to filming a Good Grief video about what it’s like to have dead family around the holidays, so here we are blogging about it! Let’s get into it!
Now my experiences are my own and I don’t speak for all orphans or people with lacking familial situations. There is no monolith. However, I’ve come across enough people in similar enough shoes in life to know that a lot of what I have to say seems to be more universal than not. I also have to show my hand and say that while I’m pretty unlucky in some pretty big ways, I am lucky in that I seem to always have a handful or so of people who do care about me. Meaning, I more or less always have a place to go on a holiday, whether it’s through a partner, local friends inviting me to their festivities, or friends around the country inviting me to travel to join them and their families. I love this and am thankful, but I do have to use this as a jumping off point into the first myths about grief around the holidays, which is:
Holiday Grief Myth #1- It’s Not Always Comforting To Be Included In Other People’s Holidays (Even Though It Is Appreciated).
Have you ever felt lonely in a crowded room? That’s what it can feel like to be at other people’s Thanksgiving or religious end of year holiday festivities. Again, it’s amazing to be invited and to be thought of. If you’re friends with someone who doesn’t have much in the way of family, for whatever the reason, please do extend an invite! It’s nice to have options and know people are considering your feelings and lot in life. But sometimes, in my experience, it’s just easier to do your own thing. My family more or less quit holidays after my dad died so even when my mom was alive I wasn’t flying home for Thanksgiving. Meaning, despite that she died five years ago (and was the second/last parent to pass) I have a lot of experience with not having a clear blueprint about what to do around the holidays. I remember one year when I still lived in Denver choosing happily to stay home and watch a million episodes of Gilmore Girls. I was super busy in life and it was just nice to have a day to myself to do whatever I want. Weird colonizing and genocide foreshadowing holiday be damned when Sonic Youth has a guest spot on Gilmore Girls! I was thankful to do that so that was festive enough for me. A lot of people can’t wrap their heads around this though and I totally get it. We were all raised on the Gospel of Home Alone and Old Man Marley was not only scary (until he wasn’t) but something of a cautionary tale about being alone on the holidays. In media, the only representation about not having a conventional family around the holidays is a sad representation- which is valid because it IS a sad time of year to be more lonely- but those representations can also be kind of one dimensional and lacks a lot of nuance. Part of why I was fine to be alone by choice, with the crew of Stars Hollow or not, is because I’m littered with exhausting examples of choosing to be somewhere for the holidays since I couldn’t be with my own family.
I remember spending a few holidays with a now former partner and always feeling like a fish out of water. His family and I got along fine, but we also didn’t necessarily click either. Everyone was nice enough but the dynamics were so different than what I was used to. I’m one of twenty cousins as my dad was one of six kids. Most of my aunts are theatrical and everyone in the family has a big and fun sense of humor. It was bedlam with tons of kids of different ages running around and we even prank called relatives who couldn’t make the meal at times. We also insisted on going around the table saying what we were thankful for before eating, and at a 35+ dinner table that took forever and the food would be cold by the time we were done with the annual gratitude exercise. My ex’s family was so different- in a neutral way but I still felt culture shocked. The family was a small group of people, all pretty mild mannered, and the meals felt slightly more formal by default with the warm dinners and lack of prank calling and all. And yet, his mom kept side-barring me to make sure I wasn’t “overwhelmed” at their “outrageous family dynamics.” Not only do I hate it when people narrate my experiences under any circumstances (because they’re almost always wrong and/or projecting), but having to feign politeness while feeling like a stranger in a strange land and missing my own (deceased) dad and wishing my own family dynamics were stronger was a lot. No wonder I watched a ton of Gilmore Girls instead the year after we broke up!
Another time seemed like a surefire and great idea with a low key dinner with one of my closest girlfriends at her parent’s house. I knew her family well and a nice low simple dinner with the four of us seemed like a lovely idea. It mostly was…until they started both reminiscing about past holidays and low key bickering with each other. Everyone knows it’s weird to be apart of a nostalgia deep dive that you have no connection to and perhaps the only thing worse than bickering with your own family is watching another family bicker. It’s awkward, even under the best of circumstances, to be around other people’s family holidays. Maybe not always, but we need to recognize and normalize that sometimes for those of us who are alive in a mostly dead (or estranged) family that being at other people’s family holidays can feel a bit like forcing a square into a circle- no matter who close we are or how much we appreciate being included. There’s space for multiple things to be true at once!
I don’t want to sound totally like the Grinch, so before continuing with any semi-horror stories I want to make it clear that I have had lovely times with friends and partners (and their families) at holiday gatherings. But to be honest, those occasions aren’t super memorable for the most part. The magic of these holidays died for me not long after my dad died, and just like how we stop believing in Santa and can’t force ourselves to believe again…it’s how I feel about Thanksgiving and Christmas. The thrill is gone. So while there’s been some lovely “friendsgivings” and being included in other people’s family traditions, it’s always a little anti-climatic for me. One of the best Thanksgivings I’ve had in recent years was spending the day in my hot tub and going to a diner for dinner with a friend from Upright Citizens Brigade. It was nice because he was from Mexico, and with my family being largely dead, it was just another day for both of us and there wasn’t any pressure or expectations to do anything festive. But even the more “traditional” hangs have not all been bad and the fact that most aren’t memorable means it was perfectly fine.
Sometime along the way, I latched onto my inner introvert and started opting to do more and more by myself (like watching Gilmore Girls all day). This confused many of my LA friends greatly, to the point of it seeming like they took offense for not wanting to partake in whatever they were inviting me to. For context, my LA life had a lot of tumultuous chapters involving everything from my personal life, my mom dying, the pandemic, and my mental health spiraling (thanks to CPTSD). The year my mom died a former friend kept not taking no for an answer when insisting I should come to her place for Thanksgiving. She kept trying to sell me on how she was going to do an authentic Thanksgiving, which was the opposite way to sell me on the concept because I’m basically a Chandler (may Matthew Perry rest) about Thanksgiving and hate most of the food involved- in part out of protest and in part I find most Thanksgiving foods bland and don’t understand the appeal. Also, she wanted me to third wheel it with her and her husband making it even less appealing. I appreciated greatly that she wanted to make sure I had something to do, but forcing her idea of how I should spend the holiday and not listening/taking no for answer was exhausting when I was already in a rough space having lost my mom 5 months prior.
I’ve had other friends seem offended if I didn’t want to join them and their family on a major holiday. Again, I get and appreciate looking out for me and I even get inviting me two or three times to ensure I’m not a burden. But at a certain point, trust me when I say I’m not up for it. Many have been baffled that I don’t want to travel, via road trip or plane, to see them and their families (some of whose families I’ve never met). The ONE good thing about having a mostly dead family around the holidays is that you can avoid the holiday travel madness! It’s the ONLY Christmas miracle I get to enjoy annually, so let me have that please. I’m already not my best self this time of year (more on that another time for this series) so please don’t expect me to navigate airport security with a bunch of cranky holiday travelers if I don’t have to. I get people being worried about me and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I appreciate it. But at a certain point it starts to feel like they’re less worried about me and more into this idea of having a friend at the holiday dinner because maybe they’re too married to the idea of how they want to help me, want an “exotic” experience of not just having family at the dinner table, or want (or even need) a partner in crime to get through their own holiday. I had a guy friend once who low key even said he wanted me there because everyone in his family was coupled up and he wanted someone to pal around with. Look, being single can be painful especially amongst a bunch of partnered off people (especially around the holidays) and I would never, ever, EVER minimize that. But also, c’mon. Just because I happened to be family-less and single at that moment didn’t automatically mean I was up for being a manic-pixie-dream-platonic-Christmas-plus one. How on earth is that fair? And if you think I’m being sensitive or reading into it, he even was so bold to compare our situations. Your singleness amongst your alive family is not the same as my deceased family, sir. We are NOT in the same boat.
The too long and didn’t read of this all is that if someone is grieving, whether it be active grief (like the loss is still relatively recent and they’re still navigating their emotions around the loss) or the more permanent grief of having a void you can never truly fill, let the griever chose their own adventure. Half or more of the time we will likely take you up on whatever you’re inviting us to. Usually we’ll have a fine enough time. But it’s not a personal attack on you if we say no; we’re just protecting our own mental health because as amazing as it is to be included, most holidays are kind of a bummer no matter what after a major loss. I have a more extreme example than some due to I haven’t seen my extended family in over a decade and have not heard from any blood relatives on a major holiday in three years and counting, but the holiday magic is often partially if not totally gone after a death in the family- whether we show it or not. I’m weirdly honest about my feelings on most things, but most of us (even myself included) mask our dark and often complicated feelings around the holidays to not make other people uncomfortable. But it’s exhausting acting overly excited for things that are just neutral for us. It’s exhausting trying not to hurt your feelings when we say no for the fifth time because you didn’t listen or trust us the first four times you invited us to your holiday. Let us choose our own adventure and trust us to make the decision that’s best for us. If you want to be a good friend, this is all you have to do:
Invite us to your festivities, no more than 2ish times.
Respect it if we say no and do not take it personally.
Check in on us by wishing us a happy holiday when the day comes- we do love being remembered on the day (generally speaking).
If we do come, know that we’re happy to be there but nothing is going to totally fix the losses we’ve endured, so please don’t toxic positivity cheerlead us into getting more excited about it than we want to.
If you’re lucky enough to have an alive family you get along with, just enjoy them without making false comparisons to our circumstances (but more on that in a future post).
But for real, invite us. It’s worth saying again because this post was about the nuance of how hard it is to be apart of other people’s family traditions because that’s never talked about in culture really. But everyone loves to be thought of and included, so in no way did I mean that you shouldn’t invite us (if you’re up for it). Inviting us is such an awesome friend thing to do, and I don’t want that to be glossed over. But respect it if we aren’t up for it too; our journeys are complicated and can even change year to year. Inviting us and supporting our decision either way is 100% the best way to support someone you love who doesn’t have a lot of family.
I’m planning to do a post about grief around the holidays weekly through the end of the year, so please come back each week for more (plus other posts I’ll be doing as I’m now settled in Atlanta and looking forward to blogging again). I’m working on a better social media page to click on and find all of my info, but for now if you wanna follow me I’d greatly appreciate it and my social media tabs are on the top or bottom of your screens (depending on your device). Thanks for reading and following!