The holidays can be a magical time of year, but they can also be especially difficult for those grieving the loss of a loved one. Hannah Parksmith is the lead chaplain at the PeaceHealth Ketchikan Medical Center. She said there are many different kinds of grief people tend to feel, including loss of a familiar situation, bodily autonomy or a beloved relationship.
Parksmith sat down with KRBD’s Michael Fanelli to discuss what makes the holidays so difficult and why it’s important to identify your loss and needs.
Listen:
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Hannah Parksmith: The holidays are really interesting because it’s a time of ritual and it’s a time of togetherness and this is when we realize most what we have lost throughout the year. Things are not the same, right? And it becomes even more apparent when you are outside of your routine. So it’s true that the holidays sometimes bring up stuff that we have kind of suppressed deeply during the rest of the year, when we are on a regular schedule.
Michael Fanelli: So what advice would you offer to people who are struggling with this?
HP: I feel like you can’t know what you need to help you through the grief until you’ve really named what it is that you’ve lost. Then we can begin to problem solve and say, “What can I plug into this hole that might make me feel whole again?” And that looks so different for everyone. For some people that might look like companionship, reaching out to a friend or spending the holidays in a new way with family. It also might look like reconciliation. The holidays are a time for forgiveness and for remembering what’s important to us.
MF: I guess my main question is — this is something that hits home for me, I lost a sibling a couple years ago — and I wonder how you honor your loved ones, but also try to enjoy the holidays. Or will the holidays just always be sad?
HP: Yeah, I resonate a lot with that story. I actually became a chaplain because my brother died very unexpectedly. And I don’t know that I have an answer for you. I know how I’ve personally done it. This is probably too much to share on the radio, but I’ll say it. During the time that my brother died, there was a lot of turmoil in my family. There was a lot of chaos, and we were estranged, me and my whole family. None of us were in communication. And when my brother died, something clicked in us, and we realized that there was a deep need for reconciliation and forgiveness. And so we, without even really speaking about it, we just kind of knew that that was our path forward. And you know, we don’t really do much to celebrate my brother. We spend some time on his birthday. We like to remember the day of his birth, not the day of his death, and we choose to make that a celebratory time. And I don’t know, I like to think that there’s something about us reconciling and the healing that’s happened in our family with the relationships that is somehow making my brother proud. He didn’t get to see that reconciliation, but somehow I feel that maybe he knows, and I feel like that’s what he would have wanted.
MF: Yeah, wow, okay, thanks for sharing that. Is there a sort of reframing that we can do, that you would suggest around something that is inherently sad, to try to find a more positive outlook on it?
HP: I think being hopeful is really important, and hope takes a lot of different shapes, but I never want to reframe someone’s sadness as something positive. Sadness is not something to be scared of, and it’s not morally bad to be sad. It’s uncomfortable, but just because something’s uncomfortable doesn’t mean that we should avoid it. Sadness is an indicator that we lost something, and I don’t know that healing or peace is going to be found unless we can really sit with the fact that we really have truly lost something. But that’s not to say that you can’t also be hopeful, that you cannot hold two things at the same time.
MF: Would your response or feedback change given how long it’s been since someone’s seen a loss? Do these ideas still apply for people that maybe it’s been many years?
HP: Absolutely, and this is why it’s so important to be able to name specifically the loss that you’re feeling, so that you can then identify the need behind the loss. If you’re not able to identify, using language, and talk specifically about the loss, then it’s going to be really hard for you to find a solution and a path forward. And sometimes people need some time to be sad before they’re ready to take action. But you know, if you are someone who you feel stuck in your grief and your sadness and you really feel like it is debilitating, I encourage you to really make community a priority. But if you are a person who really tries to put a positive spin on things, and you really are uncomfortable sitting in your sadness, then I would encourage you to pause before you try to get up and start serving, to sit in your sadness and let your sadness teach you what it needs to teach you. Also, I hope it’s understood, baseline, that you should be talking to a therapist. And you should be talking to — maybe it’s your pastor, maybe it’s your really wise grandma — and talking out all of these things with them too, because it’s using words and giving language to our experiences that helps us make sense of what we’re going through.
MF: If you’re someone who has a friend or family member who’s grieving, I know that it can be very challenging to figure out what to say, what to do, how to approach them. What would you recommend there?
HP: Ask questions. It’s really easy to be prescriptive and say, “Invite them over for Christmas dinner.” I would invite you to not do that. Instead ask, “Hey, what would be helpful during the holiday season? Do you want to celebrate? Will celebrating get you out of your head, or are you just really not ready to celebrate right now and you need some space?” When I was little, something my family did is we always went to the movie theater and saw a new release on Christmas Day. And that might be a fun way to invite a friend who’s feeling kind of lonely during the holidays without needing to make it all about Christmas, and family, and unwrapping presents. That way they can get to be with people and not be alone on the day, without needing to experience all of the loneliness that comes with seeing families do what families do.
MF: Hannah, I really appreciate you taking all the time.
HP: Thank you.
For further reading on grief, Hannah Parksmith said she relies on the book “All Our Losses, All Our Griefs: Resources for Pastoral Care” in her profession. She also recommended griefshare.org to find virtual or in-person grief support groups.
