The Silent Grief We Carry Into the Holidays.

liveinconfidence
Nov 4
4 min read

There’s a kind of grief no one prepares you for—the kind that sneaks into your holidays long after the casseroles have been dropped off, the sympathy cards have stopped, and everyone assumes you’re “doing better.”

It’s the grief that sits quietly in your chest while life continues. The grief you learn to carry while raising kids, showing up to work, smiling when people need you to, and folding into a world that requires you to keep moving.

I know that grief intimately.

Because in what felt like a blink, I lost the people who shaped my world—one after another—before I ever had the chance to catch my breath or break down the way my heart needed.

I lost a close friend to cancer… the kind of friend whose laugh still echoes in my memory, and whose absence still feels confusing because some part of me expects the phone to ring.

I lost my brother to cancer, too. Watching him fade was a pain I didn’t know how to carry. There’s a unique kind of heartbreak that comes from witnessing someone you love fight for their life, and knowing love isn’t enough to save them.

Then came my mom—two long years of kidney failure, hospital rooms, drained energy, caretaking, decision-making, and the emotional exhaustion of watching the woman who raised me slip away piece by piece. I had to be strong for her, even when I was breaking inside.

And then my stepdad—dementia slowly stole him long before his body left this world. Losing someone twice—the mind first, the person second—changes you.

By the time the world expected me to “be myself again,” the version of me everyone remembered… didn’t exist anymore.

The Part No One Talks About

When the holiday season rolls around, it’s not just the people we miss.

It’s the roles. The routines. The belonging. The feeling of being someone’s child with a place to return to.

I don’t have a “home” to go to anymore for Thanksgiving. And there’s a grief in that no one warned me about.

I miss the things I used to roll my eyes at: the family arguments over nothing, my mom being grumpy that dinner was running late, the chaos in the kitchen, the early morning Black Friday shopping because that’s just what we did.

I didn’t know those moments were already becoming memories. I didn’t know I should hold onto them harder.

Now, my kids go to their dad’s side of the family for the holidays—and I’m grateful they have that—but it leaves me in a strange space:

Not needed anywhere.

Not expected anywhere.

Not belonging to a holiday “home” of my own.

The last couple of years, I’ve had Friendsgiving, and I’m thankful for it. Truly. But after the laughter and the shared dishes, there’s a moment when everyone goes back to their families, their roots, their traditions…

…and you get in your car, or walk into your quiet home, and feel the echo of the silence.

That grief is real. That transition is disorienting. That loneliness is not a failure. It’s a chapter of life no one talks about.

The Unspoken Truth

When the people who made the holidays feel like home are gone, you’re forced into a new identity you never asked for.

You become the matriarch before you feel ready. You become the tradition-maker when all you want is one more year of the old ones. You become the “strong one” because there’s no one left to be strong for you.

And that… is a very specific ache.

So Where Does That Leave Me Now?

Right here—in the space between what was and what will be.

I’m learning to build a life I wasn’t prepared to build alone. I’m learning to create traditions from scratch, even when it feels like betrayal to the ones I lost. I’m learning to let grief sit at the table with me without letting it run the whole holiday.

And this is where the Why Not Me? Concept reframe enters—not as a dismissal of grief, but as an invitation to honor it while still choosing myself.

Not “Why me?” Why did all of this happen? But “Why not me?” Why can’t I be the one to create something new now?

Not to replace what I lost—nothing ever will. But to honor it by continuing to live.

The Reframe I’m Choosing This Year

Why not me…to build a new kind of home, one that lives in the people I love, not just the walls I once returned to?

Why not me…to create new traditions—slowly, gently, without pressure—ones that reflect the woman I am now?

Why not me…to let grief and gratitude coexist at the same table?

Why not me…to heal forward, not away?

I can carry my grief and still choose joy. I can miss what I had and allow myself to build what’s next.

Both can be true. Both are allowed. Both are love.

Because grief, at its core, is love that has nowhere to go.

This year, I’m giving it a place —

not at the head of the table like it used to hold, but a place among everything else I’ve become. For a long time, I carried my grief like a secret weight, afraid that speaking it out loud would make me seem ungrateful or stuck.

But grief deserves air.

It deserves compassion.

It deserves to be acknowledged for the love and life it represents.

So I’m not pushing it away. I’m integrating it. I’m letting it shape me, not define me.

This year, grief can sit with me — not as a shadow, but as a reminder:

I loved deeply.

I lost deeply.

And I am still here.

Still growing.

Still capable of joy, even with a tender heart.

May YOU find your happiness and allow the grief of loved ones to have a place among all you do during the holidays ahead of us.

Becky Shaffer/ Educator/ Author/ Life Coach/ Podcast Host