The Heart’s Journey Through the Holidays
When the Holidays Stir the Heart
The holidays are a season of traditions, but they are also a season of remembering, of awakening the people, the places, and the versions of ourselves that shaped us. They touch the tender parts of us: the places we’ve tucked away, the places we’ve learned to walk around, the places that still ache even when life feels full.
One song, one scent, one ritual, and grief rises.
This isn’t weakness or regression; this is biology and love intertwined.
Christmas has a gravity all its own. It gathers our memories, our expectations, and the stories of how life “should” be, and it drops them into the present moment. Sometimes, right in the glow of the lights and the sound of familiar songs, grief walks in as if it never left, because something in us is still loving, still remembering, still connected.
Grief is love with nowhere to land, and the holidays call that love forward, asking for attention.
This Year, Grief Has Been Close
Relationships have shifted for me this year through death, illness, distance, and the quiet unraveling that happens without clear explanation. I’ve felt the ache of those who are no longer here and the strain of what is changing in real time. Then I noticed a surprising companion: Grumpiness.
When Grumpiness Becomes a Guide
I’ve been more irritable this season. I am shorter on patience and quicker to frustration. At first, I blamed the outside world with its pace, the noise and the expectations.
But the truth was more revealing:
My energy vibration had dipped, and it was calling for attention.
Grumpiness, scientifically, is a nervous-system contraction. It is a cue that something inside needs space, regulation, or acknowledgment. Energetically, it’s a broadcast. When I vibrate with irritation, I attract more irritation. When I vibrate with heaviness, I meet more heaviness.
So instead of pushing it away, I got curious:
Where is this tension living in my body?
What story is it sitting on top of?
What emotion underneath is asking to be tended to?
Almost every time, the answer was grief, unspoken, unprocessed, or simply resurfacing because the season called it forward.
Grumpiness wasn’t a flaw. It was a messenger.
Why the Holidays Awaken So Much Emotion
The holidays are steeped in nostalgia and expectation. Tradition summons the years when the room felt fuller, the laughter louder, and the future wider, even if today’s life is full and meaningful.
Holiday grief intensifies because:
• Rituals bridge time.
Familiar scents, songs, and traditions transport us to moments we can feel but no longer touch.
• We carry emotional muscle memory.
The nervous system remembers who we shared past holidays with, people we’ve lost, relationships that changed and former versions of ourselves.
• There’s pressure to feel joyful.
In a season that expects cheer, sorrow can feel like something to hide.
• Holidays reveal the gap between “what is” and “what we hoped would be.”
Grief includes lost dreams, altered relationships, health challenges, and chapters that closed too soon.
Grief doesn’t show up to punish you.
It shows up to be metabolized.
Working With the Wave Instead of Resisting It
Grief, frustration, and emotional overwhelm are not obstacles; they’re invitations. Science and lived experience show emotions soften when we:
1. Give them a place to go.
Light a candle. Tell a story. Speak a name. Ritual supports the heart.
2. Allow the wave instead of bracing against it.
Emotions have a natural lifespan; resistance prolongs them.
3. Regulate before reflecting.
JoySprouts-style micro-practices like breath, grounding, humming, walking, hand-on-heart will shift the nervous system so healing can happen.
4. Speak what’s true.
A simple “I miss them today” reduces internal stress and opens connection.
You don’t have to collapse into grief for it to move. You just have to stop fighting it.
The Soft Power of Gratitude and Appreciation
Gratitude isn’t the opposite of grief, and it’s not a bypass.
It’s a stabilizer, it is a soothing agent for the nervous system.
Small moments of appreciation create fundamental physiological shifts:
Steadier heart rate
Softer breath
Released muscles
Widened perspective
The Heart’s Pilgrimage
The holidays are our most memory-rich season. They invite us into a pilgrimage through memory, sensation, grief, joy, irritation, love, and renewal. It isn’t linear and it isn’t always pretty. But it is deeply human.
So if grief pulls up a chair at your Christmas table this year, let it sit.
Let it speak.
Let it show you the depth of your capacity to feel, to love, and to heal.
On this pilgrimage:
Grief is not the obstacle; it’s the teacher.
Frustration is not the failure; it’s the signal.
Gratitude is not the cure; it’s the companion.
“What we have once enjoyed, we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” -Helen Keller
And when you’re ready, offer yourself this Joywork whisper:
“I can hold this. I can learn from this. I can let this reshape me gently.”
And if you want support through all of this, the JoySprouts beta is live. Try 30 days of simple, science-backed micro-practices designed to bring steadiness and clarity into your daily rhythm.
Finish all 30 by January 16, 2026, and you’ll be entered to win four sessions of Joywork coaching.
Sign up here: www.lindyladow.com/joysprouts/sign-up
