Grief During Spooky Season

While the winter holidays often get most of the attention, I want to remind you that October is also often a tough month for people who are grieving.

Spooky season is upon us, with its skeletons and graveyards and reminders of death everywhere. Things that once seemed like innocuous markers of the season can become painful reminders when we’ve experienced trauma or lost someone that we love.

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, fall moves in, and the days become darker. With the change in seasons, we’re often encouraged to embrace fall as a time of “letting go,” leaning into cycles of death and rebirth (as though we aren’t already thinking about death all the time).

And in the background, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we’re probably feeling the holiday season creeping in.

Pile that on top of massive amounts of collective grief, uncertainty, and fear given the current state of the world and. . . whew. It’s a lot for a heart to hold.

If you’re feeling extra tender right now, it might be more than what you’re aware of on the surface. It might also be an activation of feelings you know all too well: reminders that life can sometimes be so deeply painful, unpredictable, unsafe, and unfair.

Grief often activates grief. Current pain can bring forth old wounds. Trauma responses can resurface, including those we may be carrying from generations before us. If you live in a body that has been historically oppressed or victimized, you have even more reason to feel this.

If you’re feeling unsettled or sad or anxious right now, you have good reason to feel that way. Sometimes it helps to bring that into awareness. You may have been feeling “off” without knowing exactly why. 

This is my reminder to you that you aren’t alone in your feelings and that they make sense.

This is my reminder to you to go easy.

This is my reminder to you to seek out support.

This is my reminder to you to feel the ground beneath your feet, to feel gravity holding you, and to give yourself every bit of comfort and safety that you can. If you’d like to explore some grounding techniques, this article has a variety of easy-to-implement suggestions.

As always, take gentle care of yourself, and let’s take gentle care of each other.

P.S. Though we don’t often think of Halloween in the same way we think about other holidays, for many of us it holds its own memories and traditions. I realized this the first Halloween after my sister’s death, and I wrote about it here.