Honouring & Releasing Holiday Traditions After Loss
The first holiday season after a significant loved one has died often pulls you closer to every tradition they ever touched. You find yourself reaching for their ornaments, their decorating style, their favourite food, the music they loved… the rituals they held dear.
It’s almost instinctive.
As if some part of your soul is trying to keep a doorway open between “before” and “after.”
A way of saying, you’re still here with me.
I haven’t forgotten. I won’t forget.
In that first year, many of us honour everything we possibly can because we’re trying to find our footing in a world that suddenly feels unfamiliar. Traditions feel known, safe and grounding. Tiny pieces of safety in an overwhelming sea of change.
And then… the second year arrives.
Quietly. Softly. But undeniably different.
You might start to realize which traditions still feel like joy, and which ones are tied to feelings of pressure, or obligation, or emotional exhaustion. You notice which parts bring warmth to your chest… and which tighten your shoulders.
The reality is, your loved one in spirit is not asking you to freeze your life in place as it was when they were alive. You are being asked to integrate, evolve, and carry forward what truly resonates on a soul level.
During the second year, you continue to honour, but you can also begin to release through connecting to the gentle intuition in your body and heart. This can look like:
Keeping the items that make you feel connected, and letting go of the ones that feel heavy or out of obligation.
Making one of their favourite dishes, instead of all of them.
Decorating your home in a way that feels like you, not the version of you who was trying to hold everything together.
Creating brand new rituals that honour who you are becoming — and the love that still threads through everything.
Releasing traditions isn’t forgetting.
It’s making space for your life to continue unfolding.
Keeping certain traditions isn’t clinging.
It’s choosing what still matters.
There is no right way, no timeline, no single path through this.
Only the one that helps your heart feel more at ease.
If you’re in your first holiday season without your loved one, embrace the honouring knowing you don’t have to carry it all indefinitely. If you are moving through this transition, from year one grief to another, I hope you know how brave it is to listen to yourself. To honour what still feels good. To lovingly set down what doesn’t. To let love guide the way you remember.
And trust that your connection with them isn’t held only in traditions…It’s held in you. Always.
