336. Grief During the Holidays
The Widowed Mom Podcast
Krista St-Germain
4.9 • 695 Ratings
🗓️ 3 November 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The holidays bring a unique kind of heaviness when you're navigating them without your person. Your brain searches for them in every familiar tradition, every decoration, every family gathering - and when it can't find them, it sends out waves of emotion that can feel overwhelming.
I'm addressing why the holidays can stir up such intense emotions for widowed moms and why there's no right way to feel during this season. Whether you're dreading every moment, feeling surprisingly peaceful, or experiencing emotional whiplash between the two, your experience makes complete sense.
Listen in this week to learn what’s happening in your brain and body during this time, so you can offer yourself compassion instead of criticism. You'll discover why numbness, isolation, and rapid mood shifts are all natural responses to grief during the holidays. Most importantly, you'll learn that whatever you're feeling - from complete disconnection to unexpected joy - doesn't need to be fixed or justified.
Join my free, 3-day live workshop, Happier Holidays for Widowed Moms, to learn 3 simple ways to make this season easier. It’s happening November 18th-20th, 2025, and you can register here: https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/freeholidayevent/
Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/336
Mentioned in this episode:
Celebrate Turning 50 With Me!
As part of my 50 Widows Forward celebration, you can currently receive 10% off Grief Essentials or Mom Goes On. This offer ends June 20… or when 50 widows join. Get the discount code and more information by going to: https://the-widowed-mom-podcast.captivate.fm/50widowsforward
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Widowed Mom podcast, episode 336, grief during the holidays. |
| 0:10.3 | Welcome to the Widowed Mom podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. |
| 0:24.2 | Here's your host, Master Certified Life Coach, Grief Expert, Widow, and Mom, Krista St. Germain. |
| 0:32.9 | Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. If you're dreading the holidays this year, |
| 0:39.1 | if even the thought of decorations or family gatherings makes your stomach drop, you are not alone. |
| 0:45.5 | Maybe people around you are already getting excited and making plans, and you're wondering how |
| 0:50.8 | you'll get through it. Maybe you're pretending to be fine for your kids, |
| 0:54.6 | but secretly counting down the days until it's over. Or maybe you're someone who isn't dreading |
| 0:59.4 | the holidays. You might even be looking forward to them and that's okay too. There's no one right |
| 1:04.8 | way to feel this time of year. However you're feeling, overwhelmed, anxious, disconnected, or surprisingly peaceful, it all |
| 1:14.2 | makes sense and it's all okay. Today I want to help you understand why the holidays can stir up so |
| 1:20.1 | much emotion for widows and to remind you that there's no way to do this wrong. So why does it |
| 1:26.6 | feel so heavy the holidays? When a partner dies, |
| 1:31.3 | our brain doesn't just miss that person. It connects them to all the familiar things in our world. |
| 1:37.9 | The sounds, the smells, the traditions of the holidays all light up those same neural pathways. |
| 1:45.9 | So when our brain encounters those cues and our person isn't there, our brain can't find them, it sends out kind of an |
| 1:52.9 | alert. Our attachment system, the part of the brain that's wired for connection and belonging, |
| 1:58.2 | becomes active again. And with that activation can come some waves of |
| 2:04.0 | intense emotion and longing. And this doesn't mean you're slipping backward. There is no such |
| 2:09.5 | thing or even that holidays will always feel this way. But it does happen and it is common. |
| 2:17.1 | Also, there's another reason that we don't often think of |
| 2:20.2 | that can make this time of year feel harder. And that is that our human brain is wired to equate |
... |
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