Overcoming Grief & Guilt During the Holiday Season

I’ve dreaded writing a post like this for a while.

But it seems this year––a year of so much loss and heartbreak for so many––providing comfort within community from a place of transparency feels like an innate responsibility. And I think after years of avoiding it, I’m ready to share my journey with grief:

I lost my dad December 27th, 2011 at 11:49 am.
Precise, right?

Well, you don’t forget moments like that–you don’t forget where you were, how you found out, how you felt…because it all feels like yesterday.

But it’s been nine years…nine whole years. I’ve spent 3,283 days without my father––a feat I never thought I was capable of. I still don’t know how I made it through day one.

When I first heard my father was in the hospital on Christmas Eve 2011, I remember this wave of shock going through me. On the drive to see him, all I could think about was what my life would look like without him; it was unimaginable at 18 years-old––paralyzing to say the least. Who at 18 with their entire life ahead of them ever actually wants to imagine a life without their parents; certainly not me. But within three long, emotional, and excruciating days, the unimaginable became my reality.

And now, nine years later, I’m still getting used to that reality––this reality…The reality that I graduated from college and my dad was not there. The reality that I was the first in my immediate family to get their master’s, and my dad was not there. The reality that I moved out at 22, and my entire family helped move me, but my dad was not there.

The reality that I’ll be getting married to the love of my life soon. My dad has not met him, and on my wedding day, my dad will not be there to walk me down the aisle to my soon-to-be husband.

It sucks.

While writing this, I’m an emotional wreck. There’s also this wave of embarrassment that’s lingering within me because like I said, it’s been nine years. You would think after nine years––after two rounds of grief counseling, spiritual awakening, and now monthly therapy sessions, that you would be okay. You’d think that it wouldn’t sting as much.

But friend, it does…

And if I’m being honest, for a long time, I didn’t feel like I had a right to grieve my father. For maybe the first year and a half, I felt like I didn’t because towards the end of his life, we had a very complex relationship. Within the last six months, we both were faced with new realities and revelations about majority of my childhood––mistakes he wished he never made and was very regretful of, yet I was still hurting. And mistakes I had made out of spite just wanting to feel seen and heard by my dad, but actually ended up inflicting him. We were both growing and in need of healing––me a teenager about to be a freshman in college, and he a 49-year-old Black man who was emotionally and spiritually preparing himself to now have an adult daughter.

It was rough.

But GOD was gracious to us. Before my dad left this earth and transcended to another life, in November 2011 right before Thanksgiving, we got to really talk––I mean really talk…and heal and love on each other. It was the first time in my adolescence that I actually felt connected to him.

Less than a month later, he was gone.

And I felt robbed. But I also felt guilty––guilty that I had wasted so much time being mad at my dad, when I should’ve been loving him better. My sister and him were super close, my mom dated him all of her teenage years through college, then was married to him for 11 years before their divorce––both my sister and my mom had a right to grieve their loss of him for as long and as hard as they saw fit.

But I didn’t. He belonged to my sister and my mom deeply and beautifully, but I didn’t feel like he belonged to me because I didn’t forgive him sooner. I made myself the bad guy and withheld space for myself to feel the loss of him in its entirety because that’s what I thought I deserved.

I was punishing myself.
For years I did…honestly, up until this very paragraph I did.

But let me tell you something that I’ve learned within these past nine years: LOVE transcends. It does not end when life is over; it remains where it is fixated––where it was birthed, where it grew, where it was challenged, where it was, and still is needed. It took me the longest of time to believe that not only was I worthy to grieve my father, but that I was worthy of his love while he was alive and now that he is gone.

And his love is still running after me––just like it was when I kept turning my back on him when I was a kid. His love is still whispering to me writing this post telling me to keep going and not to give up. His love is still the light in my fire to continue my career journey in media production because that’s a dream we envisioned together (I wrote my first play in my dad’s apartment…hundreds of scripts later, I have an Emmy! Thanks, Dad). His love is still empowering me to be gentle with myself––and to heal on my own terms, but to not get stuck in my inadequacies.

I say the same to you, friend.

I don’t know the nature of your loss or the nature of the relationship connected to your loss, but if there’s anything I can tell you it is that you can heal––you can. But you have to allow yourself to do so. You have to give yourself the safe space and permission to feel all that you feels as it pertains to your grief; face it so that you can heal it.

The relationship maybe complex, but you still deserve to feel the loss of that person. You still deserve to miss them and cherish all that they meant to you. You still deserve to reminisce on the good times and the bad times. You deserve to grieve.

Now, just because you make the space to grieve doesn’t mean there won’t be times when you need that space again. YOU WILL. Grief is not a one-stop shop; it is not over when you think it is. Grief is a journey––a never ending journey of continuously loving, healing, and breaking all at once. Grief reminds us that we are human and that GOD gave us this beautiful ability to feel. Don’t run from it; embrace it.

This holiday season may be a lot harder and heavier than any other; 2020 has been trifling in many ways. BUT! 2020 has also been an opportunity for us all to pause and reevaluate what matters most to us and where we need to do some more work––some extra healing.

My hope for you this holiday is that you make space like never before for yourself to FACE IT and FEEL IT––that’s how you overcome it, friend. FACE IT and FEEL IT. My mom says to me all the time, “GOD can’t heal what you don’t reveal.”
FACE your grief and FEEL your grief.

Praying for you during this season, friend,
xo, Nic.

“Grief never ends…but it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness…or a lack of faith. It is the price of love.”