Jay here!

Hi! I know what you’re thinking. Who wants to let go of Christmas? Especially someone as bubbly and youthful as me. I’m eighteen, but I still celebrate my inner child.

Well, I’m too old for Santa Claus now, so I’m ready.

In all sincerity though, Christmas just doesn’t suit our lives anymore. As we grieve the loss of my dad, my mom and I have evolved. We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, who we are and what we like.

We learned this year in 2020 that we love being connected to nature and our surroundings! We love the moon and following the moon cycles! We celebrate the full moon by spending the night around our fire pit in the back yard. We even celebrated the fall equinox this year, and it was so fun!

What does that have to do with Christmas? Well, my mom has been ready to give up Christmas for the last six years since my dad’s death. I was heartbroken on the first few Christmases without my dad, because it didn’t feel like Christmas. It was like all the magic and joy had been sucked out of them, leaving this confusing pit of awkwardness.

I thought maybe that joy would return. After all, I knew my grief was causing this. Maybe Christmas could get back to what it used to be one day!

It’s six years later, and that never happened.

Still, I wanted to cling onto Christmas. It’s not just because of the memories of my dad; it’s because I need something to look forward to and celebrate. I thought regular life was so mundane, we need a fun time of year to celebrate! I need to be able to look forward to something, even if Christmas always lets me down.

Well, since we’ve growth this year, we celebrate life constantly. We celebrate the full moons. This last Sagittarius moon, we played music and danced under the moonlight to the song, “Dancing in the Moonlight”. It was so fun!

We celebrate things like the equinoxes. This year, we’re celebrating the winter solstice! It is the longest night of the year, and the sun is getting ready to come back. It’s astronomy that impacts us directly. Celebrating the cycles of the earth just seems so fun! It brings back that joy and magic that Christmas one held for us. Plus, decorating trees still fits with a Yule celebration, so that’s fun! I love our holiday trees, and I’m happy we get to keep them as Yule trees now.

Holidays are meant to bring joy and connect families. While Christmas does that for a lot of families, it just doesn’t hold that pleasantness for us anymore. Instead of joy, Christmas brings grief. It’s a reminder that my dad isn’t here. No matter how we try to celebrate, it’s just empty without him.

If the winter solstice brings us joy and connection, then doesn’t it make more sense to celebrate that instead? Having found something to celebrate that brings real joy into our lives, I’m finally ready to release Christmas. Plus, since we celebrate the monthly moon, regular life doesn’t seem that mundane anymore. I don’t need something to look forward to, because I can look forward to everyday life!

We should all just do what makes us happy. If Christmas is your jam, then rock on! If you celebrate a different holiday, that’s super cool! Let’s all just support each other’s happiness, and do what brings the most joy into our unique lives.

Shell here!

As we continue on our six-week roller coaster ride, more change and growth have occurred. I find it unsettling at times how hard this grief journey can be. At the same time, I am always amazed at how much growth and change come with this journey.

I know that if we never step out of our comfort zone, change will never occur. When you think about it, what about grief is comforting? Grief is a soul sucking, mind blowing, and heart shattering monster all rolled up into my new existence without Art. If that’s the case, wouldn’t I always be out of my comfort zone? The answer is yes and no.

Yes, I’m out of my comfort zone rebuilding my life without Art. My entire life changed and was turned upside down in a matter of seconds. There was no comfort in that. At the same time, the answer is no because as I continued my life grieving, I would find a grief comfort zone and stay there.

Hiding from the world became an easy grief comfort zone. The first couple years, I was really good at escaping by traveling. I also became good at hiding in my home and becoming best friends with my TV. I was in so much pain, it was easier to watch mindless TV than to deal with my discomfort.

I knew deep down I couldn’t hide forever. Deep down, I wanted to live again; I just couldn’t figure out how. It was scary and quite unsettling to go on without Art, but I needed to. I hid a lot of my emotions and became numb inside. I ignored a lot of things, places, and people.

Then in 2019, a huge shift in our lives started to happen. As Jay and I started to work on ourselves, magic started to happen. A zest to live started to peak out. Laughter started to return. Joy started to return. The will to go out and be around other humans started to become an enjoyment for us. We were working deeply on our self-care and self-love, and it was changing us. It allowed us to notice, recognize and nurture our grief.

As we were growing, changing and rebuilding our lives; we started to notice holidays and traditions, and how they felt weird. We started to question which traditions we wanted to keep and which ones we wanted to get rid of. We even questioned if we were allowed to get rid of traditions and holidays that no longer meant anything to us. Little by little, we started to change things up.

We started with Halloween. As a family, we always went to Disneyland to Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. We loved that memory, we were and are a huge Disney family, so we kept it. The first year without Art felt weird, but we still managed to a have a good time! We thought, Great one holiday down!

We talked about thanksgiving. Since we have no regular family traditions with extended family, we never really had a traditional thanksgiving with Art. So, we made this holiday our own. In fact, just this year we changed it again! You can read about that here.

For all the basic holidays such as Easter, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day; we just go to Disneyland and we don’t give much thought to the actual holiday. We just let Disney handle it all.

The one holiday we never discussed and never quite knew what to do with was Christmas.

Christmas was a big deal to Art, and he always made our Christmas special. Our last Christmas together in 2013 was spent in the hospital, but he still made it special. He loved us so much and his love always shined through, even when he was sick.

He still wanted Santa to bring Jay’s gift to the hospital. We came up with the idea to leave Jay a note from Santa at our home. The note explained that Santa knew her Dad was in the hospital, so he took her gifts there so she could be with her dad Christmas morning. Even though we spent Christmas morning in the hospital, it was still special because the three of us were together.

Now, we were stuck trying to figure out what the heck to do or how to handle this day without him. Christmas morning is hard for us. We tried sleeping through it last year, but that didn’t work. We went away two years in a row. Even though these trips were amazing, it still didn’t seem to work. The pain, the hurt and the weirdness were still there. It was a deep reminder Art is gone and never coming back. Neither of us enjoy that feeling.

It would appear that we were in a pickle trying to figure out this holiday and what to do. Even last week, we mentioned going to the beach Christmas morning for sunrise yoga. That is still the plan, and we are both excited about it!

But that nagging pain still sticks, and we want it to go away!

Maybe that pain will never go away, but we both had ideas and we were both too nervous to share them with each other.

Neither of us wanted to risk hurting or taking away something that was special to us. However, we both knew deep down something needed to be done.

We finally had a moment where we both sat down and talked about the true meaning of Christmas to both of us.

In the last year of our constant growth, our beliefs and what we thought were traditional cultural norms started changing too. Christmas is a normal celebration for most people, but it no longer feels right for us. In fact, it hasn’t felt right for years.

It feels weird! We have become more aware of our surroundings such as the moon, the sun and the earth. We are focused on the elements of our survival. We have become more aware of the universe, grounding ourselves and being at peace within oneself.

We have started a daily practice of yoga and meditations, and it has changed us from deep within our core. We see things differently now. We feel things differently now. We have a huge respect for the universe and all it’s divineness.

A few months back, we celebrated the fall equinox. I have to say, it was one of the most memorable nights of my life. We have become more aware of the moon cycles and we celebrate them. By doing this, our life is dramatically changing. We have started implementing manifestations of what we want our lives to be, and things are changing for us in amazing ways. It feels freeing, happy, peaceful and joyful. We haven’t felt this way…. Well, never!

The joy we are starting to feel daily just for life has been transforming. The minute we started to talk about Christmas and trying to make plans, our energy levels dropped. The joy and happiness started to leave. So, as the quote we just recently posted on Instagram said, “Let go of what no longer serves you.” This truly spoke to us!

As we continued our conversation, we both came to terms with the fact that Christmas no longer serves our current lives. We have no connection to it except for in the past. Why were we holding onto it so tight? It was making us deeply miserable! There was no joy in it for us. We dreaded it. Was it time to let it go?

Let go of Christmas? Who lets go of Christmas? Isn’t it our cultural norm to celebrate Christmas with all the stress, baking, cooking, cleaning, gift buying, present wrapping, traveling, seeing people you don’t really like, hanging lights and decorating normal? All for what? Yes, I know there is a religious aspect to it, and let’s not forget Santa Claus. However, if Jay and I still had family that we did things with, then these cultural norms would be fine for us.

But they are not fine for us. They no longer serve our current life.

Don’t get me wrong. If you love Christmas, go for it! No judgment here. I am talking about my current life with Jay and what works for us.

The minute we both said, “Give up Christmas,” it was as if the heavy weight lifted off both of us. The air became lighter, our faces smiled and that’s when we knew we chose the right thing.

Here the thing: giving up something that no longer serves you is a good thing. It’s not a burden or punishment. It called self-awareness and self-care. I guess you can say we replaced it with what works for us, the winter solstice!

We are over the moon about our choice in celebrating the winter solstice. In fact, we are giddy about it!

On December 25, we are still planning on heading to the beach to practice sunrise yoga and we are so excited over this. The best part? There is no stress of thinking that it is Christmas Day! December 25 will be just a regular day for us, and we are deeply relieved by this.

There it is. Six years later we are still growing, evolving and changing. We are seeking and finding what works for us and for our current lifestyle. We are accepting that it is okay to change, and it is okay to make changes. We are being courageous and doing what is best for us and for our grieving hearts. I have to tell you all, it feels good!

We have many friends celebrating Christmas, and it feels good to wish them a merry holiday, even if our holiday is different from theirs. We really hope that even though things will look different because of covid, people can still take the time to enjoy their holiday. We hope that our friends will respect us and wish us the best as we chose to celebrate the winter solstice!

Jay and I wish everyone peace, kindness, joy, understanding, love and true acceptance of one another!

We hope whatever holiday you choose to celebrate, it’s a beautiful day for you! We send you all so much love from our hearts to yours! ❤️

Aloha and gratitude,

Jay and Shell