Dealing With Disappointment, Even At Christmas

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Or is it?!?

Christmas is full of possibility and full of excitement, but sometimes things don’t go as planned. Life can always throw you curve balls, even when your calendar says it should be throwing you a party. (Should curve bells be called curve BELLS at Christmas?! I vote yes!)

Something falls through. Something doesn’t work out. The plans are cancelled, the job post filled, the promotion passed you by, the store needs to close, or you experience some loss or disappointment of a different kind. A door of possibility closes with a hard slam or a soft close, and however it happens, the final click of the lock catching is loud enough to take your breath away.

Dealing with disappointments this time of year can be especially tricky, because the season is wrapped up in so much sparkling possibility. What can you do when things don’t go as planned, or when you find yourself unwrapping a “present” that you be never expected?

Whatever loss or change has brought you disappointment, you’re the one who has to pick up where it left off and manage your way through the mess left behind. You’re the one who has to find a new way. It’s difficult. But it’s not impossible.

There are a few steps that work at any time you face these circumstances. Yes, even at Christmas. These can help you move forward with relative grace, whatever the disappointment, without asking you to pay too high a price (by either denying your real emotions or turning into a puddle of them).

I know because I’ve had some practice, at Christmas, too. This is not to throw myself a pity party or dive deep into my stories. This is just to give some context, some framework to tell you that I understand.

I’ve been there. I’m there. We can do this.

A few years ago, there was a big loss that came in December. I found myself in the doctors office, looking at an empty ultrasound to confirm my miscarriage. Where weeks before there had been a beautiful baby with bouncing arms, legs, and a heartbeat, now there was nothing. The baby was gone. I tried to stifle the cries, and even though I was prepared for the confirmation of what had happened, the visual was too much to bear without tears. I stepped into the bathroom and heard that favorite Christmas song piped in through the speakers. “It’s the most wonderful time of the year..” I sobbed. The words fell in irony on the cold tiled floor. It was wrecking, as you either know, or can imagine.

Christmas is not always wonderful.

This year I faced a much different disappointment, a very different sort, but sad none the less. We had to cancel a vacation. We planned a very special Christmas week long vacation and it sounded magical. But we had to change plans for valid reasons, and it’s okay, but it was a true disappointment. This momma had big holiday plans for the week with her precious family. I had to face a gaping hole of disappointment that was left behind. The same steps helped, even if the path was very different.

I know that some will question these two losses even being on the same page. But the truth is, no one can tell you how important or meaningful any loss is. It’s deeply personal for you. No two losses are the same, and they neither need to be compared, measured or qualified, one against one another. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big loss on paper or a seemingly small one, what matters is how it makes you feel.

The same goes for whatever you are holding in your heart. All loss and disappointment comes in like a bomb, unexpected, and destroys either what was or what was “supposed to be”. It leaves behind a gaping hole. In your heart, your womb, your calendar, your life.

Which brings me to the first step:

Just feel it.

Allow yourself to see the loss for what it is and for what it means to you. You need space to feel the emotions, to give them their fair turn. Find the physical space or a moment in time when you can cry or get angry, or both. Say the things you need to say, even if it’s to no one but yourself.

You don’t need to keep a stiff upper lip right now. Don’t edit yourself and don’t bottle it up. You don’t need to talk away the emotions right now, don’t downgrade their importance. Just feel them.

Even if they’re not as logical as you understand and know to be true on a cognitive level, emotions are valid. When we give them the time to be noticed and experienced, it’s then that they can be released. If you bottle it up and keep it to yourself, you’re doing just that. You’re keeping the negative emotions.

Let. Them. Go.

Allowing yourself those moments to feel the loss and acknowledge your feelings are crucial. You don’t need to stuff them down or pretend it’s alright. It may be, and it probably will be, but right now it’s not, and that is okay. In order to get past the emotions, to not let them bubble underneath the surface or risk taking over completely, you have to feel them. It’s the act of feeling them that actually allows you to then let them go.

When you acknowledge the elephant in the room, you cease to give it full control. When you have seen, felt, and acknowledged the gaping hole in the middle of the room in your heart, you’re ready for the next step.

Just Breathe. For a minute. Or an hour. Or a week. Close your eyes and feel what it’s like to have some of the weigh of the emotion released, even just a little. Rest for a minute. Don’t rush ahead.

Then, when you’re really ready, there’s one more step, for now. (And all can be repeated as often as necessary.)

Ask yourself “what else”. What can you do now? Maybe in spite of the loss or even because of it. What’s salvageable, what’s good about where you find yourself unexpectedly, what other possibilities exist? They may look vastly different or even not measure up when compared to the hole. But they’re something. Start there.

There are, for sure, other things to be grateful for in spite of what’s missing. These things don’t have to be big, healing bandages. They can be small bits of healing cloth on the wound. They don’t need to fix things. (Some things can never be fixed.) They just need to give you a hope for the future. They can help you think around, help you manage to tenderly tiptoe your way past the hole.

Acknowledging any scrap of blessing does not diminish the truth of your loss. It allows you to grow life and hopefully joy in-spite of the void. Maybe even in the very same space. But not by sitting and staring at the space. By acknowledging it, like in step one. By breathing in new space, in step two. And then by looking around you, taking inventory, and taking new action in step three.

The voids can be filled. It’s best when not directly though, and not right away. But by turning to look at and love what’s left around you, that’s when love can find a way in to those voids.

There was such a poignant display of this for me in a new movie on Netflix called Klaus. Klaus was an artist, a carver, a toy maker. He experienced a loss that left a hole in life, and it was visible in his craft. He had made a wooden display with spots to display tiny figurines that represented the people in his family. There were two hollowed out spots at the top for himself and his wife, and many openings below for the children that would fill their lives. However, the children never came, and then he sadly lost his wife. The spaces remained just that. Empty spaces. Voids of loss and disappointment. He covered up the carving and hid it away.

Until later, much later, life came along, as it often does, in unexpected ways, in unexpected friendship. The wooden display piece was uncovered, and the voids started filling in unexpected ways. Eventually, he found that his life, and his art piece, were both full. It was different than he imagined it would be, but love had come in and filled the voids. When he faced the hollowed out places, opened himself up to life, and turned outward to engaged with what was around him, that’s when the magic happened.

You know what’s the truth, if I had held it too tightly or spent all of my time staring at either of the voids in my life, I wouldn’t have ever seen them filled.

Not even eight months later after own my loss, I discovered that I was pregnant again. Pregnant with a baby boy that wouldn’t have happened without the loss, and that also wouldn’t have happened had I not loved, as best I could, the life left around me. I looked at the crater of my loss, I felt it. I acknowledged it, again and again. But I didn’t just sit and stare. I tried to let it go a little more each time, and then look around me. Make my lists. Love what was left, my husband, my child. Each time I bumped into the empty part, I validated the loss with feeling it, acknowledging it. Yet the trick is to not hold it so tightly to your chest that it becomes your whole identity. It was merely a part. A valid, missing part.

This week I managed my way past the vacation void, also. (I know, sounds trivial by comparison, but remember, no comparison is needed. By you or by anyone else.) I walked myself, and my daughter through the steps. We felt. We breathed. Then we made our lists. Her steps were quick and fierce (bitter tears can do that sometimes, I guess, especially if you’re five.)

I had choices to make as mom. I decided I didn’t want to spend my week looking at the space of what was supposed to be. I looked around me, at my family, at our time, at Christmas, and I decided to do what we intended, just in a different way. We’ve played a little hooky, we spent extra time together, adventured, listened to Christmas music, visited Santa at the mall, decorated our tree, stared at the lights. There was plenty of life to live and plenty of love that filled up the space. It was all there for the taking, just differently.

I guess that’s the pain and the twist about loss at Christmas. There’s still so much joy and beauty around everywhere you look. If only you can manage to look around and behold it. That’s the tricky part of it there. Does your disappointment cause you to turn in only, or eventually to look around and see what remains. That part is up to you.

I don’t know if you’re facing something that looks big on paper, or one that only feels big to you. I do know that when the door is closed, it can be so hard to turn back around, to turn your back to where you thought you were going, and to head in another direction. But I also know that it’s not impossible. You can move around it, and move ahead. These steps work on most every level, they just need to be applied with varying tenacity and repetition. Some things resolve and heal more slowly, some more quicker. It all eventually comes down to choices, though, and only you can choose to embrace what’s left.

Life needs love and trust and time to fill in the empty parts. It just takes bravery and patience (sometimes a lot, and mostly with yourself.)

If you’ve been dealing with something, I pray great grace to you. Whatever has left a gaping hole in your the room of your heart, or whatever doors have been closed, this year or this Christmas, I pray that you can find a way past it, around it, through it. There are many books written on grief, and its such a layered process. If your loss feels really big, and you need more, please, go read one. Talk to someone. This is just a start, a quick guide.

I hope that these simple steps help you. Keep them in your toolbox, practice them. Because in life, there’s always a next time. Life keeps giving us opportunities to adjust and realign. Nothing ever alllll works out just the way that we hope for. But it also opens us up to other possibilities that we didn’t know about, too. That’s the beauty of it all, looking back, of course.

I hope that whatever disappointment has settled on your shoulders, that you can find a way to release it and move around it, one step at a time. I pray that when you get a chance to look back, that you see that the gaping hole has been filled with so much love and beauty that you feel doubly complete. Full of what you had and what you now have.

Life will have disappointments, but only you get to decide if those disappointments become bigger than the life that’s still in front of you. Pour some love on the rest of your life. Watch all of it grow.

With so much honesty and so much hope for all of us, this Christmas and always,

Coco. Xo