When the Holidays Come… and You’re Not Sad

When the Holidays Come… and You’re Not Sad

By Kinyatta Gray

Here’s a truth you may have been too scared to say out loud:
You don’t feel sad this holiday season …and you feel guilty about it.

Not because you don’t miss your mother. Not because the ache disappeared. But because somewhere along the way, your grief stretched, softened, and made room for more light than you expected. And now you’re wondering if that makes you disloyal… or worse, if it makes you look like you’ve forgotten.

Let me tell you this with every ounce of my heart: you haven’t forgotten.
You’ve simply grown.

When you lose your mother, the holidays become a yearly reminder that the world keeps rotating even when your heart doesn’t feel ready to. And every year that passes, the number of holidays you’ve lived without her increases. That part never stops stinging. But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough: sometimes, even with all that history, you wake up one year and realize…
you aren’t drowning anymore.

You’re aware.
You’re tender.
You’re reflective.
But you’re not undone.

And that’s not betrayal — that’s healing.

The world expects grieving daughters to be sad on command during the holidays. But grief doesn’t run on holiday schedules or calendar cues. It moves the way it wants to, through the mind, through the body, through the spirit. And I speak from lived experience, not from a clinical lens or what a book says a “stage” should look like. I speak from the raw reality of what grief actually did to me.

And some years, grief lets you breathe.
Some years, grief lets you smile.
Some years, grief lets you show up in love for the family that’s still here, while still honoring the one whose presence shaped your entire life.

That’s not forgetting.
That’s becoming.

You are reimagining traditions.
You are making space for joy.
You are letting your mother’s spirit show up through you instead of weighing you down.

And if the people around you expect you to be sad… let them.
But you don’t have to wear grief the way they imagine it.

Three Gentle Suggestions for Navigating This Holiday Season (Even If You Aren’t Sad)

1. Prepare Your Heart and Your Words

People may expect you to crumble because “this time of year is hard.”
You don’t owe anyone an emotional performance.
Consider saying something like:
“I miss her deeply, but I’m choosing to hold onto the light she left in me.”
Short. Grounded. True.

2. Create One “Spirit Tradition” Just for Her

It could be a dish she loved, a candle you light, a song you play, or an ornament you place on the tree.
Not because you’re sad but because you’re connected.
Your mother’s love didn’t leave… it just changed shape.

3. Give Yourself Permission to Feel What You Feel (Not What’s Expected)

Whether your heart feels heavy, steady, peaceful, conflicted, hopeful, or unexpectedly okay…
that feeling belongs to you.
You’re not wrong for healing.
You’re not wrong for growing.
You’re not wrong for having a moment of peace in a sea of years that were anything but.

You’re not “over” your mother, you’re learning how to live in a world she’s no longer physically guiding. And if your light is returning, even softly, even slowly… it doesn’t mean you’ve forgotten her. It means she built you strong enough to survive the seasons she couldn’t walk you through in person.

And if no one else tells you, I see you. I understand you. And you are allowed to feel exactly how you feel this holiday season.