To the Ones Who Can’t Fake Merry This Year
How to Find Meaning When the Holidays Hurt
This one’s for the people who used to make the season magical, for the ones who strung the lights, filled the air with cinnamon and music, and made a room feel warmer just by being in it. You were the one everyone counted on to make the holidays feel like home. And this year, you just can’t. You walk into a store and the smell of pine hits something deep inside you. The music feels too loud. You pause by the ornaments and think, I used to love this part. You try to summon the spark, but your body feels heavier than it should, because you can’t manufacture wonder when your nervous system is still in recovery. You can’t wrap grief in paper and pretend it’s gratitude.
Some of us lost houses. Some lost people. Some lost the versions of ourselves that could hold everything without breaking. And even if the world didn’t burn around you, something inside you might have. You don’t need to lose your home or your community to lose your footing. Maybe your grief isn’t from fire at all, but from one of life’s quieter devastations: the friendship that drifted, the marriage that cracked, the diagnosis, the exhaustion, the sense that you’ve been running on fumes for years. This season has a way of exposing all of that. Holidays aren’t neutral; they act like amplifiers. They turn up whatever is already there, and for so many right now, what’s there is depletion.
If this resonates with you, head to this weeks resource: When You Can’t Fake Merry: A Companion for the Tender Season
Our bodies were built for rhythm, not performance. The same part of the brain that notices beauty also tracks threat, and when life keeps you in vigilance, when there has been too much loss and too many alarms, your attention stays wired for danger even when you want to reach for delight. Your body doesn’t know the danger is over; it only knows it’s tired. You’ve always been the festive one, the bringer of magic, the person who can make beauty out of chaos. But some years, even magic needs rest. Even light needs darkness to find its meaning again.
So if the garland stays in the box this year, or you can’t bring yourself to buy it at all, it’s okay. If you can’t host, or decorate, or smile through the carols, it’s okay. You’re human, and you’re tired in a way no amount of twinkle lights can fix. Grief changes the chemistry of joy. Cortisol lingers. Dopamine dips. Your brain’s reward system can’t light up for the small things until your nervous system feels safe again. That’s why happiness feels a little out of reach. Joy doesn’t vanish. It simply hides behind the body’s need for safety.
Maybe this is what healing really looks like, not pretending everything’s fine, but allowing yourself to soften enough to tell the truth. To say, “I don’t have it in me this year,” and trust that the people who love you will whisper back, “You don’t have to. Little by little, we’ll do it together.” (True story. I love my friends.) So maybe the holidays aren’t about sparkle this year. Maybe they’re about softness. Maybe the magic isn’t in what you create, but in the way your body begins, slowly, to unclench. In the first deep breath that doesn’t end in tears. In the proof that presence itself is still possible.
If you light one candle this year, let it be for what endures: for the neighbors who understand the silence, the friends who show up for the heavy stuff, the memories that outlived the flames, and the proof that your capacity to feel is still alive, even when it hurts.
With you in this.
Love,
Zelana
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