When They Won't Be Home for Christmas (Holiday Grief)Sample

Day 1: The Grief No One Talks About—Missing Who You Were Together

Everyone expects you to miss your person at Christmas. But here's what catches people off guard: you're not just missing them. You're missing who you were when they were here.

Your mom didn't just make the best stuffing—she made you feel like the child who could always come home. Your spouse didn't just wrap presents—they made you feel known in ways no one else could. Your dad didn't just carve the turkey—he made you feel like the family had a center that held.

When they died, you lost more than a person. You lost a version of yourself. The you who was someone's child. The you who was married to them. The you who belonged to that particular family constellation. That person you were with them? They're gone too.

This is why grief feels like it's erasing you sometimes. Because part of you is gone. The holidays don't just remind you they're absent, they remind you that the person you were in relationship with them no longer exists either.

Jesus wept at Lazarus's tomb even though he was about to raise him. Why? Maybe because he knew that even when Lazarus came back, those days in the tomb would change him. The Lazarus who walked out wasn't the same Lazarus who went in. Death changes everything it touches—even when there's resurrection.

You can't go back to who you were before. That person belonged to a world where your loved one was alive. You're becoming someone new now, someone who carries loss, someone who knows grief, someone learning to live in a world rearranged by absence.

The holidays will keep asking for the old you. Don't try to resurrect them. That's not resurrection—that's pretending. Let yourself be who you are now: grieving, changed, still figuring out who you're becoming.

Talk to God

God, I'm not just missing them—I'm missing me. The person I was with them. That version of me is gone, and I don't know who I'm becoming. This feels like losing myself on top of losing them. Help me trust that You're close to this particular broken heart—the one that's grieving both of them and the old me. Show me who I'm becoming. Amen.

Try This Today

Finish this sentence: "With them, I was someone who..." Write down three things. Then write: "Now I'm learning to be someone who..." You don't have to fill that in yet. Just acknowledge you're in transition between two versions of yourself.