Missing Your Loved One During the Holidays: A Meditation to Feel Close

The holiday season can be especially tender when you are grieving. Familiar traditions, gatherings, and quiet moments can intensify the ache of missing someone you love. Even well meaning silence from others can make the loss feel heavier and more isolating. In this episode of the Mindfulness and Grief Podcast, thanatologist, yoga therapist, and author Heather Stang talks honestly about why the holidays can be so painful, the social awkwardness many grieving people experience, and how meditation can offer a quiet place of connection when your heart feels full. Heather introduces the concept of continuing bonds and shares the Life Imprint practice, originally developed by C. J. Vickio and taught by Robert Neimeyer, as a way to honor love without forcing cheer or closure. This episode points you to a gentle guided meditation that can be practiced during the holidays or anytime you are missing your person. The reflection can also be used as a journaling practice and is suitable for both simple and complicated relationships. 🎁 Download your free Grief Sensitive Holiday Planner: HeatherStang.com/holiday-planner Includes mindful prompts and reflection exercises to help you plan the holiday season with care and compassion. You will learn: • Why missing your loved one can feel sharper during the holidays • How silence and avoidance from others can add to grief, even when intentions are good • What continuing bonds means and why many people find it comforting • How the Life Imprint practice supports connection, even in complicated relationships • Why meditation can help you sit with longing without becoming overwhelmed • How this practice fits into the Mindfulness and Grief System, Step Six, Continuing Bonds • Ways to use this reflection as a meditation or journaling practice If you find this episode helpful, please follow the podcast and consider leaving a review so others can find support when they need it most.

Thanksgiving can be an emotionally complex day when you are grieving. Even simple traditions or familiar gatherings can feel overwhelming when your heart is carrying loss. Whether this is your first Thanksgiving without your person or one of many, it is normal to feel tender, unsure, or stretched thin by expectations and family dynamics. In this episode of the Mindfulness and Grief Podcast, thanatologist, yoga therapist, and author Heather Stang shares seven mindful tips to help you navigate Thanksgiving before the day arrives, during the gathering itself, and afterward when everything settles again. Through personal stories, trauma sensitive guidance, and practical mindfulness tools, Heather offers a grounded way to care for your heart and reduce unnecessary suffering on this meaningful holiday. 🎁 Download your free Grief Sensitive Winter Holiday Planner: heatherstang.com/holiday-help Includes mindful prompts and reflection exercises to help you plan for the holidays with clarity and compassion. You will learn: • How emotional tension builds before Thanksgiving and how mindfulness can help you recognise it early • A simple visualization practice to uncover what may feel difficult on the holiday • How to understand and express your needs clearly, including a real life story of how one family transformed their day • Personal rituals that can bring comfort and meaning during Thanksgiving • Why children's grief is often overlooked, how to talk with them honestly, and how to support them at their own pace • How different grieving styles, such as instrumental and intuitive grief, shape family dynamics during the holidays • What to expect after Thanksgiving, why an emotional drop is normal, and how to tend to yourself with care If you find this episode helpful, please follow the podcast and consider leaving a review so others can find support when they need it most.

Holiday invitations can feel complicated when you are grieving. Even the kindest offers can bring pressure, guilt, or a sense that you should show up in ways your heart simply cannot. Whether this is your first holiday without your person or your twentieth, it is normal to feel overwhelmed by expectations, social demands, and the weight of what has changed. In this episode of the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast, thanatologist, yoga therapist, and author Heather Stang explores why saying no is so difficult during grief and how you can make compassionate choices about the gatherings you are invited to. With grounded, practical guidance, Heather walks you through a mindful four step process to help you decide what to attend, what to decline, and how to communicate your needs with honesty and kindness. 🎁 Download your free Grief-Sensitive Winter Holiday Planner: heatherstang.com/holiday-help filled with mindful prompts and reflection exercises to guide you through the season. You will learn: • Why holiday invitations feel emotionally charged when you are grieving • How to recognise internal and external pressures that make saying no difficult • A simple four step method to help you decide what you can manage this year • How to decline invitations in ways that protect relationships and your wellbeing • Gentle ways to support yourself if you choose to say yes • Why this year is only this year, and how grief shapes but does not define future holidays  

The holidays can stir up as much pain as joy when you're grieving. Lights, music, and celebrations can feel unbearable when your heart is heavy with loss. Whether this is your first holiday without your person or your twentieth, it's normal to miss them deeply. In this episode of The Mindfulness & Grief Podcast, thanatologist, yoga therapist, and author Heather Stang shares her own story of loss and the silence that shaped her understanding of grief. Through compassion and evidence-based mindfulness practices, Heather offers practical ways to move through this season with intention, honesty, and self-care. 🎁 Download your free Grief-Sensitive Winter Holiday Planner: heatherstang.com/holiday-help filled with mindful prompts and reflection exercises to guide you through the season. You'll learn: • Why the holidays can feel especially painful when you're grieving • Mindful ways to care for your body, mind, and heart • How to plan your days with flexibility and compassion • Gentle rituals to honor your loved one • How to balance grief and gratitude at the same table  

When Faith Wilcox's daughter Elizabeth began to complain about knee pain, her doctors thought it was just growing pains and she would be fine. As her pain continued, she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer that affects pediatric patients. Through 10 months of treatment, Elizabeth remained positive and supportive of the other patients. Ultimately, Elizabeth passed away just one year after her diagnosis. In her grief, Faith was able to find moments of comfort and peace despite the things that were beyond her control.  Nature has always been restorative for Faith. Walks in the woods and time on the beach helped restore her mind and spirit. She also leaned into her circle of friends, who provided additional support. Faith discovered one of her biggest relief strategies when she started journaling, after her therapist recommended she start writing to help get out some of her bottled-up feelings. Faith has since written multiple books, including Hope Is a Bright Star: A Mother's Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning to Live Again and has started a journaling program to help others who are struggling with grief. 

Beth Cavenaugh shares with us her personal experience as a nurse-turned-hospice worker at the request of her mom during her mom's final stage of life. Beth talks about her love of her work with families and patients and what caregivers need to think about during such a difficult period of time.  Hospice is a service that provides physical and emotional support for someone who is in their last six months of life. Hospice is a comprehensive team of support personnel that includes family members, healthcare workers, a social worker, chaplain, and a bereavement specialist. A nurse will come in and check on the patient multiple times a week to make sure their pain and symptoms are being managed and the patient is as comfortable as possible. A social worker and bereavement specialist can help you and your family members with some of the tough questions that come along with end-of-life care.    Beth's new book, Some Light at the End, details helpful strategies for those whose loved ones have a terminal illness or have recently passed. She can speak to: Mental wellness: Strategies to counteract anxiety, panic, and depression while living in hospice care for both those dying and their loved ones. Handling grief: Lessons from a hospice expert who has seen countless people through grief, and tips for your personal journey. Hospice 101: While in the early stages of grief, it's impossible to research all of our options. Beth details the questions we don't even know we need to ask and how to advocate for ourselves. Mobilizing: Hospice care happens at lightning speed. Beth details each step to save us from becoming overwhelmed and stressed.   https://amzn.to/3pH5fGm BIO Beth Cavenaugh is a certified hospice and palliative care nurse and educator with over 14 years of experience in caring for terminally ill patients. She has been a registered nurse for over 24 years and holds a bachelor's degree in nursing from Creighton University. Beth has supported hundreds of patients and their families at inpatient units, in-home settings, and behind the scenes in hospice care. Compassion, patient autonomy, and transparent communication are at the core of her care philosophy. Beth hopes to demystify death and dying so this powerful moment will be embraced as a normalized and celebrated life event. She continues to work in hospice and has a private reiki practice to support physical, emotional, and spiritual healing for adults and teens. Beth lives with her husband in Portland, Oregon, where they have (almost) successfully finished raising their three kids. Learn more at BethCavenaugh.com.

Until he met Patty Furino, bereaved father Dave Roberts didn't believe that the signs he kept seeing were coming from his beloved daughter, Jeannine. But soon, everything changed. In this episode of the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast, Dave shares his journey of love and loss and how the signs from his daughter transformed from triggering waves of grief into joy, and how they remind Dave that Jeannine is still close. Dave and Patty describe how Jeannine speaks through her father's new friend, fostering a deep continuing bond that allows Dave to live on after loss. When The Psychology Professor Met The Minister is co-authored by our two guests, and written from Dave's perspective and walks us through his evolution of putting aside his academic mind to being open to receiving messages from Jeannine. Patty has been his major supporter and guided him to honor and enjoy his memories but also be alive in the present. 

In episode 50 of the Mindfulness & Grief Podcast, Reid Peterson shares his story of losing both father figures in his life and the grief that comes with living without those important people. Although he was not close to his biological father the way he hoped, Reid still grieves the relationship that he wished he had with him. After his loss, Reid found support through grief groups but wanted more consistent support. This led him to create a grief support app that offers daily audio messages for grief education. 

In episode 49, bereaved father Eric Hodgdon explores how he leads a life of intention in the wake of incredible pain over the death of his daughter, Zoi, who died by suicide. He shares his fond memories of a loving and fun girl who was a sweet, supportive peer to those who knew her. Family, friends, and patients who traveled their mental health path alongside her all remember Zoi as a very special person. 

Ronald Mathias talks to us about his field of medical illustration: the art of taking complex medical procedures, descriptions, or concepts and turning them into something visual for ease of understanding. He spends most of his time translating traumatic injuries and building empathy for the pain someone has suffered into a visual medium for litigation. He is also tasked with the extremely difficult job of taking the unseen symptoms and turning them into visual representations.  For the cover of the book Superhero Grief, Ron designed the cover to help the reader understand the transformation that even Superheroes go through. Every person, superhero or not, goes through grief at some point in their lives. Each person has to leave something behind to transform into the new person that they have become. Superheroes are imperfect like us and can have trouble moving on from the trauma they have endured.