Christmas Cards Hanging on the Banister

The holidays after becoming a bereaved parent are, unfortunately, never the same. No matter how much practice I get living with my grief, the reality that my child is not here can still feel like too much. The holidays are loud reminders of what will never be again. There will be no new memories made, no new photos taken, no milestones reached. Our children are not growing.

Instead, the season often brings a heaviness, a deep sadness, a healthy dose of bah humbug, and numbness. It can feel like a regression in all the grief progress I have worked so hard for the rest of the year.

But something happened this year that felt different and I am choosing to see it as growth.

This year, I opened my Christmas cards. I actually enjoyed opening them. Then I put them up in my house.

That may sound small, but it's not.

For years after Carter died, I threw Christmas cards away, straight from the mailbox to the trash. Not because I did not appreciate the thought, because I truly did. The sting of opening them was more than I could bear.

The first two years after Carter’s death, I tried to keep up the tradition of sending Christmas cards. I felt pressure to hold on to normal and do what I had always done. Before Carter died, I loved making funny Christmas cards. I loved the idea of making people laugh and brightening our loved ones’ day when they opened our card.

After his death, sending cards no longer felt light or joyful. It brought sadness and anxiety instead. With my ever-present bah humbug, I had little ambition to continue. Beneath it all was a constant, itchy reminder that every photo I had of Carter was already an old photo. There would be no new pictures. No yearly snapshots of him growing and changing. My son was frozen in time.

Receiving Christmas cards became difficult in a different way. Opening them meant seeing other families grow and change year after year. It meant watching children age, families expand, and memories continue to be made. Even though I deeply appreciated the love behind each card, the pain of opening them often outweighed the comfort they were meant to bring.

Eventually, the cards became too painful. I stopped sending cards and I stopped opening them too.

Later, I made a small shift. Instead of throwing them away immediately, I kept them unopened in a stack on the kitchen counter before throwing them out. Over the past two years, I became able to open them, only to toss them right after. It was a quick open and discard, no lingering.

But this year was different.

Like last year, I collected the unopened cards in the kitchen. I started my usual routine of opening, glancing, and tossing but something felt off. I realized I was moving too fast. I did not want to rush through them. I wanted to take in the love behind them. I wanted to open my heart instead of shutting it down.

After the second card, I stopped.

I decided to choose a time when I felt emotionally ready to sit with them. I wanted a moment when I could truly receive what they were offering.

When that moment came, I sat on the sofa with John and we opened them together.

Something unexpected happened. We enjoyed them.

We laughed. admired our people, noticed their joy, their growth, and their lives. Instead of feeling crushed by it, we felt warmth, appreciation, and love. I found myself turning the cards picture side up because I wanted to see everyone’s faces. I wanted to feel connected.

Then I did something I have not done in years.

I grabbed the tape and hung the cards up in my house.

I did not want to throw them away. They were giving me a sense of closeness, a feeling of love and connection that I had not expected.

I am sharing this not because Christmas cards are suddenly easy or because grief is gone. It is not. I am sharing this to remind myself that progress is possible. There were long stretches of my grief when I truly could not imagine that any ease would ever return.

The progress has been slow. It often feels like one step forward and two steps back. Today felt different though, today felt like progress.

When the days come when I feel stuck, heavy, or hopeless again, I want to remember this moment. I want to remind myself that healing does not arrive all at once.

Sometimes it shows up quietly.

Sometimes it looks like Christmas cards hanging on the banister.