For longer than I can remember, my family has kicked off the holiday season by taking in one of the area’s most popular light displays. Every Friday before Thanksgiving week, we drive up to a quaint shopping village where singers, dancers, Santa and Mrs. Claus and any other number of characters rally us for the moment more than one million lights flash their colors across the village green for the first time, creating a festive wonderland. We join in the singing and often the dancing, too; we fill up on warm beverages and sweet treats and maybe do a little shopping, letting ourselves be carried by a playful joy, as kids and dogs and hundreds of other merrymakers buzz around us.
I admit I struggled this year to embrace the tradition, though I am no stranger to reluctant holiday revelry. Still, it’s unbelievable to me that the holidays are already here and with them a turning toward the end of the year. I feel, too, the dissonance of celebration, given the unfathomable tragedies unfolding across the world. And in my personal sphere, my body, no matter the dictates of my mind, drums its chorus of losses. All the absences loom larger at this time of year, including the death of my mom’s best friend Julie, who the day after Thanksgiving will be gone a surreal three years — and whose sudden death not long after a cancer diagnosis, as is the capricious nature of grief, feels more tender to me in this season than it did in 2022.
Still, last Friday I went to the Grand Illumination, as we usually do, though I’d secretly rejoiced in having an out when the weather forecast called for rain that ultimately never came. I imagined my mood would shift once I arrived. But what I found joy and sweetness in was not so much the lights and cheerful cacophony but in being with my family. In being folded into our goofy, warm, enchanted and sometimes prickly loving of each other. In feeling the steadiness of this shelter, this refuge that holds and lifts me again and again.
So many dear to me are navigating this season, without a loved one, some for the first time. And my work draws me into the cracks of the hearts I’m honored to hold, as I make space for the losses unspooled before me. I also can’t help thinking and praying about all the families being brutally torn apart by war, the death of thousands of children and babies, and the ones orphaned and irrevocably scarred by the relentless scourge of violence. There are also the growing stories of rupture and polarization among family and friends, as common ground becomes precarious amid the fractious lines of pro and con.
Given this landscape, my gratitude for my family, as shattered and rearranged by grief and loss as we, too, have been, feels more potent and vital. All the trimmings of the holidays are nothing without the love that knits and moves between us.
And so I carry gratitude alongside my grief, leaning as I tend to do into the both/and. In grief, as in life, two or more things can be true at once. I could find joy in belting out “Take Me Home, Country Roads” alongside my mom and brother at the Grand Illumination and I could feel the pang of knowing Julie wouldn’t be joining us for dessert on Thanksgiving Day. I could beam, delighted, into the wide-eye gaze of the children tottering before me and I could touch my profound sorrow over the immeasurable loss that surrounds us.
It is this immensity that makes me think how much more necessary it feels to honor this upcoming National Day of Mourning, or Unthanksgiving Day Again and again, in these last few weeks, I have come back to the Indigenous wisdom that war and violence are often the result of our inability and/or refusal to grieve — which, to me, also includes the grief we do not allow ourselves to feel for the harms we have caused. Who would we be and what kind of world would we inhabit if we made space for the weight of this enduring collective grief? For the history of violence, erasure and oppression that live in these lands we know as home.
Many of us will gather in celebration on Thursday. We will give thanks for togetherness, for feasts of our favorites, for the blessings big and small that have carried us to the tables where we’ll sit. Yet grief, messy, volatile, tender, will be sitting with us, too.
May we give it room to breathe, to speak. Allow its ache to invite more honesty, more softness, more compassion for ourselves and each other. May we follow grief’s lead when she draws us to the edges of discomfort, the shadows where we’re too afraid to look. When she asks us to let in the too-painful, to name what shivers in our throats. And may we trust that in making room for grief, we’re making more room for the good and beautiful, too … while calling forth from her dark, uncertain terrain new dreams for pathways of healing and repair that liberate us all.
Ways to honor your grief in a season that doesn’t
The holidays have a way of amplifying grief and family dysfunction, heightening tensions and expectations, leading to disappointment, bitterness and anything but the happiness we’re told we should feel. This year, the weight of world events may take even more of a toll.
Whether you’re bracing for…dreading…looking for an exit…or otherwise feeling the thickening pull of grief as you try to steer your way through this week and beyond…please know your grief deserves your care this holiday season. You are allowed to focus on what’s meaningful to you and to engage in what you only have capacity for.
Give yourself permission to unplug from anything that feels like too much. Cut back. Opt out. Set limits and boundaries. Reimagine traditions. Rest. Move your body. Feed your spirit with whatever small joys and comforts you can. Set your feet on Mama Earth. Connect with the people who let you be who you are, where you are. Cry if you feel like crying. Sit at your altar. Cocoon yourself in blankets and cozy socks. Honor your loved ones you are missing in whatever way brings them closer to you. Tell stories. Share memories. Volunteer or make donations in their honor. Cook the foods they loved. Write them letters. Keep a photo at the center of your gatherings. Ask, if it feels safe to do so, for what you need. Protect your energy. Reach out for help or support if you feel overwhelmed.
And, whatever choices you make, know you are not being too sad. Too much. Too reactionary. Too sensitive. “Too”whatever it is you might be telling yourself, or others may be projecting onto you. You are grieving, and that’s all the reason you need to take care of you.
You can do the holidays, or not do them at all, any way you want.
Honored to be a Leeway Art + Change grantee
This week, the Leeway Foundation announced its Art and Change grantees, and Salt Trails, which I represented in the application process, is so excited to be among them. Leeway supports women and trans artists and cultural producers working in communities at the intersection of art, culture, and social change.
In applying for this grant, I partnered with Catherine Birdsall of Threshold Collective, to envision a project inviting disenfranchised grievers in our community to explore the losses they’re carrying through an immersive experience into author and soul activist Francis Weller’s Five Gates of Grief. Many of us in the grief sphere have been influenced by Weller’s book “The Wild Edge of Sorrow,” and we’re so ready to dream into this space to bring what we hope will be an insightful, healing and meaningful experience to Philly next year.
Letting our dreams guide guide us in our grief
A new episode of Breathing Wind, the podcast I co-host with Sarah Davis, was released this week, and I have to say it’s one of the more fascinating conversations we’ve had. We were joined by Ning Tendo, a dream yogi, grief guide, spiritual healer and poet from Cameroon. She offered a beautiful, eye-opening glimpse of how Cameroonian culture meets the wild, primal energy of grief, while sharing her own experience of grieving her mom and how that transformative journey deepened her sense of purpose and self. We also delved into the powerful dream work Ning does, exploring the different kinds of dreams we have after a loved one dies, how our connection to the deceased can vary based on how they died and how we can make room for visitation dreams to support us in our everyday lives. Listen wherever you get your podcasts!
Tune into Bridging Philly this Sunday
Recently, Ravina Daphtary and I sat down with Racquel Williams, host of the KYW Newsradio program Bridging Philly, to talk about coping with grief at the holidays. Ravina is part of The Thread team, which has installed a wind phone to connect grievers to their loved ones who have died at the Rail Park in Philadelphia. This art installation is also where Salt Trails held its community grief processional last month.
We were so honored and thrilled to be invited to make space for grief at a time of year when it feels especially pervasive and in a culture that continues to deny and avoid its presence.
You can tune into the episode on KYWNewsradio 1060 AM and 103.9 FM on Saturday at 9:30 p.m. or Sunday at 8:30 a.m. ET or find the podcast on Apple or the Audacy app.
Beautiful, dear friend! Such a space holder and an inspiration.
Well written article! Keep being authentic Naila!💖🙏