From colorful celebrations like Dia de los Muertos to more solemn ceremonies like Blue Christmas mass, Kara has gathered an impressive list of resources to help you or someone you love navigate the difficult waters of the holiday season.

In my work as a pastor, and later as a soulcare specialist, I found that those who are experiencing grief are severely underserved. So please, pass this resource around. The world needs people like Kara who know good grief.

8 Creative Approaches to Grief:
creating new traditions for the holidaze
by Kara LC Jones

When talking with people about grief & creativity, I often hear things like, “I’m just not very creative” or “I’m not really an artist.”  The thing about learning to live life after loss is that creativity becomes an every day practice, not just an artistic endeavor.  It’s not always about writing poetry or drawing or painting.  When someone is overwhelmed by grief and goes to the ocean to throw rocks as a way to express anger, they are being creative.  When someone chooses to pay for the coffee of the person behind them, leaving a Kindness Card for the person, they are being creative. 

So at this time of year, when the holidays might end up seeming like a holidaze for bereaved people, I thought it might be helpful to offer 8 seasonal ideas for practicing your creative approach to living life after loss.

1) Remembrance Day and Month
The month of October and particularly October 15th are Pregnancy Loss, Infant & Child Death Awareness times.  Just know that if the death of a child is what has you in a holidaze, you are not alone.  Take a moment each day to light a candle.  Spend a few silent moments honoring your love for that child.  Grief cannot take away your love.

2) Day of the Dead. The month of October is also preparation and lead up to Days of the Dead.  October 31st is sometimes thought of as the day of the innocents, honoring the children who have died first.  Then November 1 and 2 are honoring anyone who has died, who you wish to honor.  There is a long history and cultural context to these traditions, and rituals often vary depending on the particular community in which you celebrate.  But most all include making, decorating, and displaying of sugar skulls.  We host a day every October for people to come to our home, make & decorate sugar skulls, and then place them on our community ofrenda or take home for their personal altars.  We pass the bucket on these days, too, and any proceeds raised go to the local Food Bank in honor of all those we are remembering. 

3) Giving Thanks. While many of would say we feel no thanks at all for the grief that has visited upon us, we can choose at some point to begin paying Kindnesses forward in the name of the person who died, in honor of the love we still feel for them.  One wonderful way to “allow your loved one to touch the world” is through the Kindness Project over at the MISS Foundation.  You basically do a kindness for someone and leave a card for them that says, “This random act of kindness was done in memory and honor of (fill in the name here.”  We’ve heard of amazing and creative stories thru this project over the years. 

4) Children’s Memorial Day. The second Sunday of each December is honored as Children’s Memorial Day.  Though this started as a grassroots awareness movement by one family, it has been embraced by international organizations like Compassionate Friends, MISS, MADD, BPUSA, and more.  When you are lighting your candles for winter holidays, add a candle for remembering those you love, for what you feel you’ve lost, for honoring the love you have that cannot be touched by death or loss.  If you want to connect with others at this time, many of the participating organizations have Memorial Day services, or you can organize your own candle lighting.  For full information click here.

5) Blue Christmas. There has been a quiet movement afoot in the last few years in faith based services.  We’re starting to see “Blue Christmas” masses and “Blue Holiday” rituals being offered.  Though I haven’t yet seen one central website or organization offering a comprehensive listing of these services, you can do a Google search for “Blue Christmas Service” and you’ll find lots of articles and listings.  The thing I find so interesting about this movement is that it is basically a faith based support for people whose faith is flagging at the moment. Rather than giving out platitudes or telling people how they “woulda, coulda, shoulda” feel, these events allow for people to feel what they feel when they feel it and have a place for expression and connection during the holiday season.  That’s a big leap up from the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” era!

6) Alternative Gift Giving. Another part of the holiday season is gift giving.  When we feel down, especially if we are missing someone who is physically gone, this can be a hard ritual to face.  There are several alternatives you might try.  Go ahead and buy for the person.  In our house, we think about how old our son would be now; what we would want for him; what he would want as gifts.  We shop, we wrap, we celebrate.  And we find a family with a child the same age that needs a little help in the gift giving department and we donate the gifts forward.  Sometimes we do this through the local food bank, but the Salvation Army also hosts an Angel Tree program for this each year.  Though I do sometimes keep one of the items to add to my son’s memory shelf in our home.

Another thing we’ve done is to have trees planted through Give-A-Tree program , or donate a flock of chicks through The Heifer Project.  Then we send note or cards to others saying, “Such and such has been done in your honor and in memory of our son.”  It is a way of getting off the endless cycle of material stuff! Not to mention, you are giving something back to the world while still honoring the tradition of gift giving and acknowledging your loved ones who have died. 

7) Time Off, Time Out. The holiday season can be bustling, but it can also be a time when things slow down.  Business slows, people take time off, kids are on holiday.  Be your own best advocate and make time off, time out for you and yours.  We all seem to keep busy schedules these days, blocking off time for various activities of each family member.  Well schedule time off, time out with equal weight and importance compared to any other activity.  Seriously.  Make an appointment for yourself to “Do Nothing.”  Allow yourself some silence.  Some reflection time.  Some time to breathe and feel your body and being.  Imagine setting aside the heavy feelings and grief.  Put them on the shelf outside the room – you can pick them up later.  And for now just sit and breathe.  Let your mind and heart touch on appreciation.  Chant for a few minutes, “I approve of myself.”  You don’t have to believe it, you might feel funny saying it, but try it out.  See how it feels to cheer for yourself, to be your own advocate, to be with yourself in love instead of criticism or hurriedness or mindlessness.  Give yourself the gift of an appointment with nothing!

8) A Self-Care New Year. As we move into the New Year, there is always lots of talk about resolutions and changes people want to make and keep.  But for this coming year, why not consider an alternative to the typical resolutions.  What about making a decision to be present to exactly who you are in this moment?  Instead of being in a constant state of needing to fix, get better, improve, why not be with the you that you are right now.  Tend to the you of this very moment.  Take a few moments in each day to be with yourself in a quiet space.  Listen to your breathing, hear what your body, mind, and spirit are calling.  Honor those callings. 

If your BEing really wants to do something around this practice, then get in the habit of making notes just after your quiet time.  Note what you hear, callings or visions that rose to the surface.  Use those notes to inspire you later.  Maybe they are the basis of some writings you want to do.  Maybe they are the sparks of a drawing or painting or collage you want to make.  Maybe they are the inklings of a new path of learning you’d like to explore.  Let them guide you as you learn to tend to yourself and your heART.

Whatever you decide to do (or not do), be (or not be) this holiday season, know that the holidaze can simply be a calling to explore your every day experience more creatively.  It is okay to add new traditions to old ones or to drop old ones entirely.  Each day you have the response-ability to create meaning in all that you do.  You are your own best advocate for finding your way through the holidaze.  And you are not alone.  Many of us out here are creatively exploring.  Connect as you need and want!  Make the holidays your own.

Kara LC Jones is a Grief & Creativity Coach and the heARTist behind the offerings at Mother Henna. If you found these ideas inspiring, there are other ideas for coping with the holidaze KotaPress, And on the KOTA: Knowing Ourselves Thru Art blog. We’ve also got Creative Prompts year round at both the Mother Henna blog and KOTA blog.

In 1997 my first child, Simeon, arrived stillborn and a I passed through a Mother’s Day in a queer state of being. I felt I had become a mother, yet I had no one to mother. People kept saying that I had “lost” a baby. The terminology troubled me and I struggled to find better words to describe what I was experiencing.

This year a dear friend is mourning the loss of her first child, who’s heart stopped beating midway through her second trimester. As I try to be a good traveling companion to her on the journey, memories and feelings from Simeon’s pregnancy and birth have come rushing back. Now I have so many more resources at my fingertips. Now help is a hand.

So on this Mother’s Day I offer these resources to you – for yourself, for a friend. And I hope that in the midst of the complicated emotions Mother’s Day might bring you may find among them, hope.

_______________

If you need a gift to memorialize a child turn to Stacy, the soulful artist at Bella Wish. Stacy makes personalized pendants which make a lovely traditional Mother’s Day gift. She can also help you find a way to support and remember someone on a more difficult journey. (She’s making my friend a set of pendants with encouraging words. What words might help someone you know through their trying time?)

If you or someone you know are mourning the unexpected end of a pregnancy or trying to survive a child’s death, Jenny Schroedel’s new book “Naming the Child: Hope-filled reflections on miscarriage, still birth and child loss offers heartfelt stories and suggestions for both mourning and remembering. I’m honored that Jenny included Simeon’s story in her book. She handled our story with respect and care, as she does all the stories on her beautiful and helpful website.

Rachel Barenblat is a long time favorite of mine at Velveteen Rabbi. She’s made Through, her collection of beautiful, supportive poems about miscarriage available as a free pdf, read aloud as an MP3, or as a chapbook for a low cost-only price. This is a wonderful resource if you want to find something inspiring to include in a card to a friend who is mourning, or to nurture your own soul through loss and into recovery.

At Surviving Baby there’s an excellent list of practical to “do’s and don’ts” in the post What to do When Her Baby Dies.

If you are on a journey through fertility Melissa Ford has a fantastic website, Stirrup Queens, and has recently published all her findings in her new book Navigating the Land of If: Understanding Infertility and Exploring your Options.

If you need to follow the story of ‘someone like you’ I highly recommend the poetic Kate at Sweet Salty, who writes about the loss of one of her twin sons, and the joy of mothering the two boys who are still with her. 

Also on my list of recommendations is Jennell Paris at the Paris Project who writes frankly and thoughtfully about the loss of her triplets and her journey through pregnancy and parenthood. Jennell’s article When Mother’s Day is Hard is especially timely.

May comfort and healing be with you today, on Mother’s Day and in all the days that follow.

This piece is cross-posted from my regular Sunday column at BlogHer.com.

This is an ongoing series about How to Build Your Soultribe. Click here for step one and step two, or follow me on Twitter for notification when a new post is up. To listen to this post click here.

A couple weeks ago, Portland artist Jolie Guillebeau wrote to me via Twitter:

“I have a dilemma and I wonder if you can help. How do you properly grieve the loss of your Soultribe, without being bitter?”

Ah, the ten million dollar question!

Part of getting ready for your new Soultribe involves saying goodbye to your old one. I’ve been a part of several meaningful tribes in my past: small groups at church that became and extended family; a group of friends who wanted to build a co-housing together; a group of seekers trying to provide soulcare to one another over beer, bread, and a bowl of soup. Each one of them brought me the gifts I needed at the time I needed them. But leaving them was difficult. The first was closed out of exhaustion. The second ended after mysterious interpersonal fall-outs. The third ended when we decided to move overseas. Each goodbye came with a confusing mix of emotions: anger, gratitude, fear, expectation, sadness, relief.

I am not known for making a graceful exit. I stay too long until I am sick and bitter; or I rush to leave too abruptly. But I am learning a little about leaving a Soultribe–what you take with you, and which bits you have to unpack before you can feel at home again.

Unpacking the Anger
We often leave our Soultribe because of a falling out. This is sad, but what’s the point of pretending it’s not true? Religious groups fight over doctrine. Communes collapse under the strain of what to do with the common purse. Writer’s groups get fed up with each other’s feedback. It happens, and it’s maddening. Here are two things I find helpful in dealing with anger.

1) Honor your Anger. The best way to get bitter is to ignore your angry feelings. Many of you know that I used to have an anger altar in my backyard where I could throw plates at a heap of stones. That’s because I believe anger packs a lot of heat, and discharging that energy can be helpful. But if you can’t find a place to break things, you can honor your anger in other ways. Tell a friend your anger story. Write it down. Collage an image of it. Give it a great big seat of honor on your mantelpiece. I promise it will help.

2) Find the Primary Emotion. Once when I was very angry, a friend told me “anger is a secondary emotion.” At the time, I wanted to throw something hard at his head. But later I realized how helpful this advice was. Anger is indeed real – but it is also a cloaking device. The red hot heat of anger hides other more primary emotions behind its flashy showmanship. When I am angry, and I’ve already ranted and raged in some plate breaking sort of way, I then complete the dealing-with-anger practice. I sit down, usually with a pen and a notebook. I close my eyes. I thank my anger for being an early warning system. Then I ask it to step aside so I can see what is behind it. (Hurt feelings? Not feeling listened to? Disappointment?) Then I get to work on paying attention to that emotion. It works every time.

To Every Season, Change, Change, Change
When I was in my twenties I spent a few weeks at JPUSA—a commune in the poorest part of Chicago. JPUSA had been around since the era of the Jesus Freaks. I was in awe. These people had lived common purse, in families of choice, at poverty level for decades. That was the kind of community I longed for – one rooted in service and place—one with longevity.

What I did not understand was that Soultribes exist for a season. They serve a certain purpose for a certain time. And while some like JPUSA go on for a long time, the reality is their membership is in constant flux. People come and go. Relationships change. Goals alter. And you know what? That’s how it’s meant to be.

Sometimes it’s that the group dynamic which changes, and what you started with morphs into something strange and unfamiliar. Sometimes you change and what once fit and supported you no longer serves you well. When that happens there are three things I find helpful

1) Make a Good Ending. If a group blows up in a mess of bad feelings, this may not be possible. But if you are attentive to the seasonal shifts in yourself and in your group, you can take your leave in a way that creates shalom rather than illness. To make a good ending: give plenty of notice; carve out some time with the tribe to remember what you’ve done together; express thanksgiving to the people you shared so much life with. This can be both incredibly restorative, and emotionally draining—but it’s worth it.

2. Make space for sadness. Leaving your Soultribe often brings about a sense of sadness and loss. Grieving takes time, comes in cycles, and needs you to honor it. One of my favorite tricks for dealing with this process is a shrine for sadness. The simplest version is to clear a space on your window sill (I like to give the process sunlight and fresh air), find a pretty bowl, and gather some pebbles. Every time you remember something sad, or recall something you miss about your community, put a stone in the bowl. What this communicates to your soul is: this is real, this is what you are supposed to feel, there is a space for this sadness.

3) Memorialize The Real. Sometimes when a community closes you can get thrown into a cycle of self-doubt. Was it really as good as you remembered? Were you ever really friends? Had it actually ever fed you? Because we humans are complicated, any tribe we build is a mixed bag. But it’s rare that something you’ve lived in has been a complete bust. Don’t let your gremlins tell you otherwise! Find a way to memorialize the good about your lost tribe. Write a list of true things on a long coil of paper. Make a slide show of your photographs from that era. Read your journal from the time you spent with them. These things will help you remember The Real, and embody the message that while your tribe was not permanent, it was valuable and treasured.

What Soultribe have you left behind? What did you experience? How did you take your leave? What tricks do you have to help you mourn, remember, and celebrate?

Maggie Ann asks: My question is along these lines: What brought about the shift in your spiritual ideology? As it has shifted how have you reconciled it to those close to you who still follow your previous belief system?

Church stopped working for me. First sermons became meaningless. Then worship music stopped meaning anything. Prayer bottomed out — I felt like I was just worrying and pleading all the time.
Then…I fell in love with art. Jesus became more real to me – a real person with passions and errors and compulsion. I started seeing wisdom in other people’s belief system. People-who-were-not-Christians acted more Jesus-y than a lot of the Christian I knew. Loved lived in a thousand places.

(My NaNoWriMo project is a book about how this shift happens, how to survive it, and what to do next. Keep your fingers crossed!)

I don’t know if I’ve really “reconciled” with people from my former religious world. If you make this kind of post-religious leap, reconcilation may not be the goal so much as…um…peacekeeping? It’s more like we’ve made a pact to not debate each other. My general practice is to try and hold more than one truth in the same open palm. This is a key tenent of postmodernity. I don’t always manage to do this well, but it’s a goal of mine. I may not like what people who are close to me believe–or how they try to force those beliefs onto others–but I can give them space in this world to have their beliefs which differ from mine. I can even see the beauty in the old belief system when it works for the people I love (“praxis” again). When it doesn’t work, and people still feel obligated to force themselves into it—that makes me sad. I feel a lot of sorrow, and sometimes anger around this.

Jen P asks: Do you distinguish God (in you internal experience anyway) from your own intuition and if so, how?

Honestly, not really. I see my intuitive voice as the voice of the Spirit, who I like to call The Muse. Since I’ve been practicing trusting my intuitive wisdom more, I’ve learned to distinguish the energy of intuition from the energy of impulsiveness and/or panic. Initially these all felt the same to me. Intuitive knowledge has a lower, deeper hum to it. It feels more grounded – like a really solid tree pose in yoga. Panic or impulsiveness that is not rooted in wisdom feels more frantic and desperate. Intuition is compelling, not desperate.

Jennifer (a former Monkfisher) asks: What is your spiritual community like where you are now – are you finding soul friend?

I would say it’s in development. I don’t think the church we pop in and out of will ever be our main spiritual community. It’s sweet and the pastor is great, but we are only kind of clicking there. I like the liturgy and the ambience — except for the giant crucifix. The little Dreamboarding Circle that’s forming in our living room is quite nice, and I can see some soul friendships forming there. A lot of my community – spiritual and otherwise—is on line these days, which I’m not accustomed to, but I’m enjoying it right now. I’m kind of enjoying the solitude right now.

MotherHenna asks: When a grief comes, how does it affect you? Has your ability to process and integrate grief and joy, love and loss been affected/shifted by a) being an expat and/or b) you changing spiritual beliefs? If you could teach someone else anything about the experience of grief, what would that lesson be?

I love how Kara sandwhiches the questions about living abroad and changing spiritual beliefs between two questions about grief. She’s really been paying attention! (Thanks Mother Henna!)

Grief comes in waves. You can’t just sit down and process it all out, then move on. It comes and goes, flares suddenly, then slips away. It’s tricksy, that grief.

Grief affects me in a strong physical way. I get a lot of tension on the soft palate of my mouth and in my throat. Because of this I’ve been known to describe grief as “ a wolf at my throat.” I have to swallow a lot. My chest feels heavy and I have certain sensation sort of under my ribs at my diaphragm that I can’t quite explain. Emotionally, I get very quiet and very sad. Physcially I tend to hold my body small and still. When I’m grieving I often find myself sobbing –a very primal sobbing. This especially hits me late at night. I often get frozen creatively when I am grieving. Usually I just have to pay attention to grief, give it my tithe of tears, and wait for it to pass.

I’m more present to both grief and joy now that I live abroad. There are less distractions here, and less obligations, so both grief and joy loom larger. I don’t know that the change in my spiritual beliefs have effective my experience of grief or joy in particular. Anger though, that’s another story…

The graduate school I attended was very attentive to grief. I learned a lot there about paying attention and giving grief its due, because grieving and mourning are so important to the healing process. The two things I most often teach people about grief are:

1) it comes in waves not stages. Just as you can’t know when a rouge wave might knock you off your feet at the beach, nor can you know when grief will swell. Pay attention when it comes. Let is receed when it’s done.

2) In regards to grief that is associated with a death, I often tell people that you never ‘get over’ a loss like the death of a loved one (or other kinds of death.) A loss creates a hole in the ground. In time, the soil starts to erode back in and the edges soften, but you never ‘get over it.’ Instead you learn to live a new way, with this space as one part of your life’s whole.

Next set of Q’s with thier A’s: life goals and other quirks…

If you are mourning some loss in your life — a loved one, your own youth, your health, a dream unfullfilled–these books could give you some companionship for the journey. And as always, please add your own good resources in the comments. Shalom.

…….

Leaving Souren has been a little bit like a death. I hate to be so melodramatic, given that there are so many things going on in the world that are ever-so-much harder and more devastating. Leaving your semi-adopted teenager in the States in order to go gallivanting around Europe with your two adorable blood children and a handsome husband—this barely makes a mark on the ‘hardships’ meter. Still, it’s hard, to take a child into your heart and then to say goodbye.

I know, of course, that there is the telephone and internet, and even old fashioned snail mail. But if you’ve ever known, or met, or even grazed shoulders with a teenage boy, you should realize that communication is not, generally speaking, their strong suite.

I knew, when we left, that most communication with Souren would be over. And I’m trying to not put my happiness under his text messaging thumbs. You simply cannot let a teenager take the wheel of your happiness. That’s even more daft than letting them drive your car on prom night.

But at night, when those nasty little buggers come to get me, I am mournful, and I re-think the wisdom of being so nonchalant about grafting a child who is not my own, so firmly onto my family tree. In those dark moments, I write maudlin poetry on the pages of my notebook. (The emotions of my days and nights are so different, sometimes I am left wondering, which is more me?) Though the pain in these overwrought words are real, I have to ask myself, would I hesitate to love this way again…to love this way still? When we are paying attention to the true and the questions, these are the things that come up. These are the ponderings that make up the reality of whom we are and who we are to be. So of course, the answer must always be, ‘amen.’

——

loss is a wolf at the throat,
there, at the front of the neck
where all you cannot swallow
lies exposed and unprotected

the ache and the tear of it,
the way you bleed unchecked

this is what it is
to take another’s child,
graft him deep into your veins.

i cannot recommend it,
this unchecked rushing of the blood
when the graft does not take,
when the bloodline is severed.

even birthing blood ceases with the hours,
after the placenta tears.

but what of that wound
of which nature has no counterpart?
does this blood then run without clot,
without ebbing,
leaving in its wake
more than the womb as hollow?