Coping with Holiday Grief: Navigating Loss After a Child’s Suicide

Silent Night: Navigating Holiday Grief After the Loss of a Child to Suicide

Summary

The article “Silent Night: Navigating Holiday Grief After the Loss of a Child to Suicide” acknowledges the ongoing journey of grief after losing a child to suicide. It emphasizes that it’s okay to not be okay during the holidays and offers tips for coping, including honoring traditions or creating new ones. The article also highlights the importance of support groups like Parents of Suicides and a Holiday Bill of Rights, reminding individuals to grieve on their own terms.

Introduction

The article “Silent Night: Navigating Holiday Grief After the Loss of a Child to Suicide” compassionately addresses the difficult journey of grief following the heartbreaking loss of a child to suicide. It reassures readers that it’s perfectly acceptable to feel not okay during the holidays, offering heartfelt suggestions for coping, such as continuing cherished traditions or creating new ones that reflect their emotions. The author, Beth Brown, underscores the vital role of support groups like Parents of Suicides and the concept of a Holiday Bill of Rights, encouraging individuals to honor their grief and mourn in a way that feels right for them.

Still a holiday season of expectations. A season rich with symbolic meaning. A season of faith. A season of gathering round. Family. Loved ones. Children. But in a season of connection, rituals, faith, and joy unbridled, I find pain everywhere.

Beth Brown, “Coping with Holiday Grief: Navigating Loss After a Child’s Suicide,” My Forever Son: Healing After Losing a Child to Suicide

Related Reads

• The Pain of Losing a Child: Holidays Bring Reflection
• Coping with Holiday Grief: A Guide for Parents
• Navigating Holiday Grief: Support and Strategies
• Holiday Grief Series: Handling the Holidays After Suicide Loss
• Coping with Holiday Grief: Self-Care Tips to Navigate the Season

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My Forever Son

Table of Contents

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Healing From the Loss of a Child is a Parent’s Lifetime Journey

If you’ve lost a child to suicide, you are not alone. Help is found here. My Forever Son: Chronicling Grief, Hope, and Healing After Losing My Son to Suicide is a blog sharing a mother’s journey with grief, hope, and healing after losing her only child.

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“Silent Night, Holy Night”: How Much I Wish My Heart Could Still Sing

Silent Night, Holy Night, All is Calm, All is Bright.

Mother and Child: Silent Night–A beautiful Christmas carol once upon a blue-sky moon. How much I wish my heart could still sing “Silent Night.” Now only “Mother without Child.” Still a mother but having lost her child.

Celebrating the Holidays

Still a holiday season of expectations. A season rich with symbolic meaning. A season of faith. A season of gathering round. Family. Loved ones. Children. But in a season of connection, rituals, faith, and joy unbridled, I find pain everywhere.

I feel most empty in a season meant to sustain hope.

I’ve been through the heaviness of holiday grief eight times now. Perhaps the only consistency lies inherent in the reason I write this My Forever Son blog: I lost my only child, my much beloved 20-year-old son Dylan, to suicide. Everything after that is completely at the whim of what it takes for me to make it through this time of year.

Navigating Grief One Breath, One Day at a Time

From the Pages of My Grief Journal: Christmas Day 2013

18 months into grieving the loss of my son, Dylan

Exhausted, but holding on to H.O.P.E. (Hold On, Pain Eases)

I ran the gamut of emotions yesterday, from true gratitude and joy with being with my family, to the utter despair, sobbing, and heartbreak of grieving the loss of my only child, my 20-year-old son. Mom said to remember the good memories through the years. That is a nice idea in thought, but I am not in this place. Maybe I will be someday, but not now.

I held on yesterday, embracing the day by opening a new box of dog biscuits for my Gordon Setter, then launching an Internet search for a new setter, either English or Gordon. I poured myself into it, almost forgetting what day it was; I’d say happily distracted, but perhaps just frenetically and frantically trying-to-be distracted. 

During my search, Mom called and said to come on over. I dilly-dallied and didn’t get there until an hour later (she lives 10 minutes from me), because I knew that when I walked into her house, I would launch into 19 years of Christmas spent at her house, gathering with the same core family—my sister, my brother-in-law, my adult niece and nephew, eating the same Christmas dinner—it’s always some sort of meat centerpiece, roast of some cut of beef (I’m vegetarian), same baked potato bar with broccoli, cheese, sour cream, and so forth, same almost everything save for not having Dylan right there with me.

Mom changed some things this year. I think she is full of the ache of grief, too. She couldn’t bear to put up her artificial tree, and instead bought new a small, totally different Christmas tree. She didn’t set the tree up in her living room, the way it was for 19 years—she put it in her office. I welcome the change, bring on the change, for it is just too unbearable to do the same old, same old as it just breaks wide open the chasm of my heart knowing everything’s the same except Dylan’s being here.

I was “okay” for awhile. Helped Mom finish making Snickerdoodles. I had made the dough on Monday, but that was it, I just couldn’t bear to bake the cookies. So she and I stood in her kitchen, rolling the sweet dough into cinnamon and sugar. That’s about all I could do. I sat down at the table, but Mom wanted me t move into the living room so she could set the table. I burst into tears, stumbled into the living room, hit my knee and foot on the coffee table, and wailed. Mom thought I had hurt myself. I told her I wasn’t crying over banging my knee and foot, I was crying over Dylan.

And it just didn’t stop. Yesterday was 18 months for me, 18 months since Dylan died by suicide, and suddenly, at Mom’s, I was aware of his gaping absence and the incredible pain. I haven’t sobbed like that in awhile, so I guess you could say I’m “healing,” but I did yesterday. Dinner was delayed. We were supposed to eat at 3:00 EST, and lo and behold, my sister’s family was late.

I retreated to an upstairs bedroom, slumped into the arms of a rocking chair, tossed a lap throw around me and desperately dialed into the Parents of Suicides conference call.

I have unending gratitude for the multitude of ways I’ve been loved and supported (in the online support group for grieving parents, Parents of Suicides) these past 18 months. Yesterday I was flooded with love and support. I talked to a couple of other PoS parents and over the course of our talk, I felt lighter and less sorrowful, and more hopeful and knowing I will see my son again. I bank on this, I believe this, I will see Dylan again.

Yesterday’s PoS (parents of suicides online support group) call turned my grief around, and I was able to go back downstairs and be a part of my family as is, just me with all of them, eating an amazing meal Mom so lovingly prepared, opening gifts, feeling happy and even smiling. I was relaxed and content, wrapped in my family’s tradition laced with the new, different traditions we must now hold.

And I already wrote about this on PoS,  but I’ll say it again. I have the greatest, most compassionate parents. They gave me a black leather bracelet with Dylan’s name spelled out in silver block letters. The AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) emblem, a life preserver, dangles from the clasp. 

I wish we had talked about Dylan more today. Mom mentioned him when we prayed—she asked that God be close to Dylan today, but we didn’t share stories or memories. My sister and her family seem unwilling to go there. I almost think they think it will make me more sad to talk about him, and I know I’ve shared how important it is that I hear his name and remember him out loud at family gatherings, but maybe I need to do that again.

I stayed longer than I intended at my parents, and I ate more than I should have, but I can honestly say that it was a “good” day. If I can only just get past the Christmas part. It got me last year, and it crippled me for part of the day this year. This is such a long, arduous journey, and sometimes I just feel full of seeming contradictions. I am both happy and sad all at the same time, feeling grateful and blessed and full of pain and longing. And it is the longing that gets me still, still after 18 months. I sometimes think I haven’t yet decided to rejoin the rest of the world. I am trying, ever so slowly, to rejoin the living world, but my world is still so fraught with raw, piercing pain. 

I’ve heard it said “this too shall pass.” Oh that this might be so, that the dropping off into deep grief will slowly recede, leaving me there in its wake, and coming violently and unpredictably still, but not all the time, not as despairingly as I fell yesterday. But then again, maybe this is just my journey now. 

The toughest thing is learning to live with the pain, of deciding each day to keep on keeping on, of trying oh so hard to live in hope.

www.pos-ffos.com
www.facesofsuicide.com
www.suicidememorialwall.com

Parents of Suicides–Online Grief Support Groups for Bereaved Parents and Friends and Families of Suicides, My Forever Son

Navigating Holiday Grief: Mastering the Art of Declining After Saying “Yes”

Holidays absolutely, faithfully, come round each year

Holidays absolutely, faithfully, come round each year. My struggle is always the same:

• To do or not to do
• To go or not to go
• To back out of a plan
• To pull away into solitude
• To say “no” when I’ve already said “yes”

I have read–and continue to read as the holidays come round again–copious amounts of helpful tips and strategies for bereaved parents coping with holiday grief. Perhaps some of these tips and strategies for how to survive the holidays after the loss of your child will help you too.

It’s Okay Not to Be Okay

What helped the most?

Perhaps just realizing that it’s okay not to be okay. Throughout my grief, I’ve learned to:

• Take each holiday as it comes.
• Know I can do things differently
• Collect a bevy of helpful tips, resources, and strategies for navigating grief through the holidays and through memorial dates.
• Take time to honor my grief, including self-care and saying “no” even after saying “yes.”

Navigating the Holidays: Sometimes Just Making It Through Is Enough

It is not the grief you want to avoid, it is the pain. No one can take that pain away, but grief is not just pain, grief is love. 

David Kessler, Grief.com

Included below are helpful tips for getting through the holidays and ways to survive grief at the holidays when you are a parent who has lost a child.

“Grief and the Holidays”

(The following excerpt from David Kessler’s ‘Grief at the Holidays’ can be read in its entirety at Grief.com.)

Tips for Getting Through the Holidays After Losing a Child to Suicide

• Think about your family’s holiday traditions. Consider which ones you would like to continue, and which you would not. Consider developing new traditions if that feels best.
• Other family members or friends may feel differently than you do about the way occasions have been celebrated in the past. As you are able, talk openly together about your preferences before the holiday so you will know what to expect.
• Consider whether you want to be with your family and friends for the holiday, or whether it would be more healing to spend time by yourself this time. Consider taking a trip if that feels right.
• Be aware that anticipating an event is sometimes harder than the event itself.
• If you find it comforting to talk about your loved one, let your family and friends know that in advance. Tell them it’s okay to mention your loved one’s name.
• If you would find it comforting, make a plan to get your loved one’s friends and family together to acknowledge her or his birthday. If spending the day alone feels like a better choice, or with just one or two close friends or family, that’s okay, too.

Read more tips at Grief.com

Holiday Bill of Rights for Those Experiencing Grief

Adapted from other sources, this list reminds you that you have a right to experience your grief on your own terms: 

1. You have the right to say “time out” anytime you need – to arrive late or step away from family gatherings early, to be alone without explanation when you need to grieve in the quiet, to walk outside when you feel overwhelmed.
2. You have the right to tell others how you are feeling with honesty – you’re not obligated to answer the way others might expect or want.
3. You have the right to not be joyful every single moment of the holiday, but if you look for and feel joy and love during the holidays you have an equal right to that, too.
4. You have the right not to send out holiday cards.
5. You have the right to not listen to holiday music or participate in gift exchanges and/or holiday celebrations.
6. You have the right to be excited about going holiday shopping then change your mind when you get there, or buy a present for your loved one and do what you want with it.
7. You have the right to laugh at unexpected times.
8. You have the right to be angry.
9. You have the right to long to have your loved one back, to have the life you once had.
10. You have the right to find a way to honor and remember your loved one during the holidays by whatever ritual you feel comfortable with.

*Excerpts can be found in their entirety at AFSP, “Healing Through the Holidays, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention*

The Griever’s Holiday Bill of Rights

October 16, 2023, Author: Bruce Conley

1. You have the right to say “time out” anytime you need. It’s OK to blow off a little steam, step away from the holidays, have a “huddle,” and start over.

2. You have the right to “tell it like it is.” When people ask, “How are you?” you have the right to tell them how you really feel, not just what they want to hear.

3. You have the right to some “bah humbug” days. You are not a bad person just because you don’t feel like singing Christmas carols all day.

4. You have the right to do things differently. There is no law that says you must always do Christmas, Hanukah, or other holidays the same way you have always done. You can send 10 cards instead of 100—or no cards at all. You can open your presents at somebody else’s house; you can do without a tree; you can have pizza instead of ham or turkey. You can be creative and start a new tradition.

5. You have the right to be where you want to be, at home or a relative’s, in any city or state you choose. There’s no law that says you must stay home or you must go someplace.

6. You have the right to some fun. When you have a day that isn’t so bad, and you feel like doing something for fun, then do it. You don’t have to be afraid of what someone else may say if they see you laughing and having a good time. Laughter is every bit as important and healing as tears.

7. You have the right to change direction in mid-stream. Grief is unpredictable. You may be all ready to go somewhere or do something, and suddenly you are overwhelmed. When that happens, it’s okay to change your mind. There’s plenty of time in life to be predictable; exercise your right to change when you need to change.

8. You have the right to do things at different times. You can serve a meal at a different time; go to bed at a different time. You don’t have to be a slave to the clock.

9. You have the right to rest, peace, and solitude. Take a nap whenever you need one. Take time to pray and to meditate, to recharge your spirit.

10. You have the right to do it all differently again next year. Just because you change things one year and try something different does not mean you have to do it exactly the same way next year. You have the right to change things how you want to change things.

Bruce Conley, The Griever’s Holiday Bill of Rights, Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors

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The Story of My Forever Son

Beth Brown, Author

About the Author

Beth Brown is a writer, educator, and bereaved mother who shares her journey of healing after losing her only son, Dylan, to suicide. Through poetry, essays, and her blog My Forever Son, Beth offers comfort and hope to others navigating grief, honoring the enduring bond between parent and child and celebrating the small joys that illuminate the path toward healing.

Meet the Author: Writing Through the Abyss

by Beth Brown

There are places that cannot be mapped, only entered—terrains of loss where language falters and the heart, stripped of its certainties, must learn to speak again. I am Beth Brown, a mother whose son, Dylan, died by suicide at twenty. My life, once measured by the ordinary rhythms of teaching literature and nurturing a child, was pierced in two: before and after. In the aftermath, I found myself wandering a wilderness where time bent, memory ached, and the world’s colors dimmed to the hush of grief.

On baby’s breath and angel wings,
You bring me love yet still,
— “On Baby’s Breath and Angel Wings”

I did not choose to become a chronicler of sorrow, but grief, relentless and unbidden, pressed its ink into my hands. I wrote because I could not bear the silence. I wrote because the ache demanded witness. In poetry, I found a way to hold both the weight of absence and the persistence of love—a language for the unspeakable, a vessel for memory, a place where my son’s name could still be spoken.

He left too soon,
Lifting life from June,
Casting torrents of rain.
— “He Left Too Soon”

There are nights when the world tilts, and I am returned to the moment of loss, the fracture that remade me. Yet even in the deepest dark, I have learned to listen for the faint music of hope, the pulse of love that endures beyond death.

Beat still my heart,
Beat still my mind,
Weary though thou art,
Carry his love along with thine,
Though heavy on thy shoulders
Crost fields throughout all time.
— “Beat Still My Heart”

My poems are not answers. They are offerings—fragments of a life lived in the shadow of absence, pieced together with longing and the fierce, unyielding devotion of a mother’s heart. They are the record of a journey through the labyrinth of grief, where each turn reveals both the ache of what is lost and the quiet radiance of what remains.

My child sleeps in a cradle of stars,
Gently rocked by the moon
Lullabies in his heart,
Heavens in galaxies swirl round to the sound
Of a mother and child’s love beating on.

Meteor showers, on the darkest of nights,
Bring comfort and joy to my child’s delight,
Aurora Borealis tints sky blue and green,
Where my child remembers his mother in dreams.

–“Falling Stars in a Moonless Sky”

There are questions that haunt the bereaved: Could I have known? Could I have saved you? The mind circles these unanswerable riddles, but the heart, battered and tender, learns to rest in the mystery.

I’d have reached right in to your dark night’s soul—
I would have held on, I would have clutched you,
I would have never let you go
But you told me “Mom I love you”
Oh my child, if I’d only known.
— “Once Upon a Blue-Sky Moon”

In the landscape of loss, I have discovered that love is not diminished by death. It is transformed—becoming both ache and solace, shadow and light, the filament that binds the living to the lost.

Body, mind, soul, rough and ragged,
Weeping tears falling still throughout time,
Carrying weight of mourning and grieving
Falling broken when thou wert mine.
— “Beat Still My Heart”

I write for those who walk this wilderness with me—for the mothers and fathers, siblings and friends, whose lives have been marked by the unthinkable. My hope is that in these poems, you will find not only the echo of your own sorrow, but also the quiet assurance that you are not alone.

Starlight for a mobile twinkling ‘ere so bright,
To remember his mother that darkest of nights,
When slipped he from her grasp and fell through this earth,
Tumbling still planets, sun, folding time in rebirth.
— “Falling Stars in a Moonless Sky”

That we might understand we cannot separate mental illness from physical illness and that try as we might, we cannot see inside another’s pain.

–“Ode to Suicide: That We Might Understand”

And how my heart keeps on beating
Is a mystery to all,
For without you beside me
Through life’s depth I crawl.

I live now life backwards
My heart beating in time,
To the life that we lived
When you, child, were mine.

Try as I might
I can’t seem to live,
For my dreams all belonged,
To your future forward lived.

—“Bury My Heart”

If you have come here searching for words to companion your grief, I welcome you. My poetry is not a map, but a lantern—casting light on the path we walk, together and alone, toward a horizon where love, undiminished, endures.

But boughs break and love falls through the cracks in the earth,
And the centre can’t hold when orbits, slung far, break their girth,
Gravitational interference, passing stars in the night,
Jetting orbs, falling stars in a moonless sky.
— “Falling Stars in a Moonless Sky”

Grief is wild—untamed, unending, and full of shadows. Yet within its depths, I have found moments of light: a memory, a poem, the gentle rustle of leaves, the warmth of a cup of tea. My words are both ache and love, a testament that even in the deepest sorrow, we can find meaning, connection, and—sometimes—hope. Through poetry, I reach for my son and for all who walk this path. If you find yourself here, know that you are not alone, and that love—like poetry—endures.

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If you wish to read more, my collection, Bury My Heart: 19 Poems for Grief and Healing After Losing a Child to Suicide is available on Amazon Kindle. and many other reflections await you at myforeverson.com.

Bury My Heart

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Professional Resources

Online Directory for Coping with Grief, Trauma, and Distress

After A Suicide Resource Directory: Coping with Grief, Trauma, and Distress
http://www.personalgriefcoach.net
This online directory links people who are grieving after a suicide death to resources and information.

Alliance of Hope for Suicide Survivors
http://www.allianceofhope.org
This organization for survivors of suicide loss provides information sheets, a blog, and a community forum through which survivors can share with each other.

Friends for Survival
http://www.friendsforsurvival.org
This organization is for suicide loss survivors and professionals who work with them. It produces a monthly newsletter and runs the Suicide Loss Helpline (1-800-646-7322). It also published Pathways to Purpose and Hope, a guide to building a community-based suicide survivor support program.

HEARTBEAT: Grief Support Following Suicide
http://heartbeatsurvivorsaftersuicide.org
This organization has chapters providing support groups for survivors of suicide loss in Colorado and some other states. Its website provides information sheets for survivors and a leader’s guide on how to start a new chapter of HEARTBEAT.

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Resources and Support Groups

Parents of Suicides and Friends & Families of Suicides (POS-FFOS)
http://www.pos-ffos.com
This website provides a public message board called Suicide Grief Support Forum, a listserv for parents, a separate listserv for others, and an online chat room for survivors of suicide loss.

Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS)
https://www.taps.org/suicide
This organization provides resources and programs for people grieving the loss of a loved one who died while serving in the U.S. armed forces or as a result of their service. It has special resources and programs for suicide loss survivors.

United Survivors
https://unitesurvivors.org/
This organization is a place where people who have experienced suicide loss, suicide attempts, and suicidal thoughts and feelings, and their friends and families, can connect to use their lived experience to advocate for policy, systems, and cultural change.

Professional Organizations

American Association of Suicidology
suicidology.org • (202) 237-2280
Promotes public awareness, education and training for professionals, and sponsors an annual Healing After Suicide conference for suicide loss survivors. In addition to the conference, they offer a coping with suicide grief handbook by Jeffrey Jackson. This booklet is also available in Spanish.

The Compassionate Friends
compassionatefriends.org • (877) 969-0010
Offers resources for families after the death of a child. They sponsor support groups, newsletters and online support groups throughout the country, as well as an annual national conference for bereaved families.

The Dougy Center
The National Center for Grieving Children & Families
dougy.org • (503) 775-5683
Publishes extensive resources for helping children and teens who are grieving a death including death by suicide. Resources include the “Children, Teens and Suicide Loss” booklet created in partnership with AFSP. This booklet is also available in Spanish.

Link’s National Resource Center for Suicide Prevention and Aftercare
thelink.org/nrc-for-suicide-prevention-aftercar • 404-256-2919
Dedicated to reaching out to those whose lives have been impacted by suicide and connecting them to available resources.

Tragedy Assistance Programs for Survivors (TAPS)
taps.org/suicide • (800) 959-TAPS (8277)
Provides comfort, care and resources to all those grieving the death of a military loved one through a national peer support network and connection to grief resources, all at no cost to surviving families and loved ones.

LOSS
losscs.org
Offers support groups, remembrance events, companioning, suicide postvention and prevention education, and training to other communities interested in developing or enhancing their suicide postvention and prevention efforts.

Online resources

Alliance of Hope
allianceofhope.org
Provides a 24/7 online forum for suicide loss survivors.

Help Guide
helpguide.org
Provides resources and tips for how to navigate the loss of someone to suicide.

Parents of Suicides (POS) – Friends and Families of Suicides (FFOS)
pos-ffos.com
An internet community to connect parents, friends, and family that have lost someone to suicide.

SAVE: Suicide Awareness Voices of Education
save.org/programs/suicide-loss-support • (952) 946-7998
Hosts resources for suicide loss survivor including a support group database, newsletter, survivor conference and the Named Memorial Program, which offers a special way to honor your loved one.

Siblings Survivors of Suicide Loss
siblingsurvivors.com
Provides resources and a platform to connect with others that have lost a sibling to suicide.

Finding professional care and support

Find a mental health provider

• afsp.org/FindAMentalHealthProfessional
• findtreatment.samhsa.gov
• mentalhealthamerica.net/finding-help
• inclusivetherapists.com
• afsp.org/suicide-bereavement-trained-clinicians

Find a provider for prolonged grief

• prolongedgrief.columbia.edu

Find additional resources for marginalized communities

• afsp.org/mental-health-resources-for-marginalized-communities

Crisis Services

988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
988lifeline.org
Call or text 988 (press 1 for Veterans, 2 for Spanish, 3 for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults) or chat 988lifeline.org
A 24-hour, toll-free suicide prevention service available to anyone in suicidal crisis. You will be routed to the closest possible crisis center in your area. With crisis centers across the country, their mission is to provide immediate assistance to anyone seeking mental health services. Call for yourself, or someone you care about. Your call is free and confidential.

Crisis Text Line
crisistextline.org
Text TALK to 741-741 for English
Text AYUDA to 741-741 for Spanish
Provides free, text-based mental health support and crisis intervention by empowering a community of trained volunteers to support people in their moments of need, 24/7.

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