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Coping during the holidays

The EyesOnThePrize.org community shares secrets and strategies for surviving -- and thriving -- during the holidays.

Cancer is stressful. Holidays are stressful. What happens when you combine the two? Have you felt guilty for "ruining" your family's holiday? Have treatments sidelined you from the festivities? How do you face your first holiday without a loved one who has passed away?

How do you cope when celebration is the last thing on your mind? Share your thoughts, feelings and strategies for dealing with the holidays during diagnosis, through treatment, or after loss!

See also, our FAQ "Coping during the holidays."

 

Sue D. <webmaster@eyesontheprize.org> from Pennsylvania, USA
    Contributed on November 25, 2003

My sister loved the holidays. No matter how poorly she felt, she would pull herself together to decorate, shop, bake, or make gifts.

After she died at age 36, only my mom, my brother, and I remained of our immediate family -- no spouses or children. It seemed unbearable to pull out six Christmas stockings from their storage box for only three people. Every ornament we hung on the tree reopened our wounded souls, since she (a talented craftsperson) had made so many of them. Empty chairs at the dining table outnumbered the full chairs!

We needed some new traditions, since the old ones just didn't fit anymore -- after all, how many cookies can three people eat?

Our new tradition is to decide on a project to do every year. The first year we made little care packages for patients in hospitals over the holidays. Another year we built a genealogy web site for my mother's family -- my mom the genealogist, me the designer, my brother the programmer. Another year we made Christmas cards over Thanksgiving. (I was the project the year I spent Christmas in the hospital with asthma! I don't recommend this tradition! ;-) This year, it will be a web site for my father's branch of the family!

Come every Fall, we start brainstorming ideas for "this year's project." The holidays will never be the same as they were when my dad and sister were alive. But our new tradition allows us once again to anticipate the holidays with the joy of being together!