This is the season of light, feasting, and enforced joy – and for many, it arrives right in the middle of grief.
We all move through periods of light and dark in our lives. The light expands us; the dark tends to shrink us down. Nowhere do I feel this more strongly than here in Sweden, where a collective inner retreat is part of a survival strategy – one that helps us cope with the physical energy deficit caused by the lack of light.
In darkness, we shrink back into ourselves. And when we go through our own dark nights of the soul, our world contracts to the bare essentials of survival. We become self-focused the psyche working overtime to understand, accept, and process the latest curveball life has thrown our way. The world’s wider troubles are either in direct competition with our own, or they form a strangely comforting soup of shared misery.
When you’re sad, happy people are hard work. When you’re suffering, other people’s success can feel like an insult to injury. And the festivities of light that insist on comfort and joy demand something we’re not yet ready to give. There is nothing less cheering than attempts to cheer you up.
So I’m writing this for those for whom this time of year is a reminder of loss – or an intrusion upon a recent loss still felt acutely. Not to cheer you up, but to offer a nod of understanding. Yes, this too shall pass – but right now, you are in it.
Loss – whether of a loved one, a job, our health, or a relationship – doesn’t just ask us to say goodbye to something or someone we cared for or depended on. It also demands that we change. That we transform. In my own case, I went from being about to be a mother to living in a no-woman’s-land between “proper” mothers and women for whom motherhood was never on the radar. Others may be transforming from being someone’s daughter to becoming fatherless, perhaps even an orphan. Or mourning the loss of a job that once gave security and status, knocking confidence completely off balance. A widow, instead of a wife.
We don’t just mourn what is lost externally; we also mourn the part of ourselves that has been irrevocably changed. This takes work – hard inner work. And so we shrink a little. We disappear inward. And that’s okay.
Even when the light returns – as it will – shining on your transformed and still slightly bruised self, you will need to take it slowly. Tomorrow, the sun returns to the Western Hemisphere. But only in tiny increments. It will rise at the same time it did today, and then, over the coming days, it will rise a minute earlier and set just under a minute later. It is a slow, steady climb toward the peak of light in mid-June.
And so it is with our own ride on this wheel of fortune we call life. While the tumble into darkness often seems sudden and disorienting, the climb back into the light – step by step – should, and will, take the time it takes.
So in the midst of the feasting – be it Christmas or any other festival of light – give yourself permission to be the festive turtle rather than the festive hare.
Let friends and family who happen to be further along on their own wheel of fortune carry more of the load. Don’t resent them for it, but don’t feel obliged to be any more joyful than you truly are.
Hold fast to the wisdom that there is a pattern to this dance between darkness and light – a predictability that applies to the relationship between sun and earth just as much as it does to its inner reflection within our hearts. When we shrink into ourselves, we lose perspective. It can feel as though the now will be the forever now.
But it won’t.
It will pass.
Until then, give yourself time.
All the time in the world.
Lysanne Sizoo, international Mental Health specialist
With over two decades of experience, Lysanne Sizoo specializes in assisting expatriates, international professionals, and global nomads facing mental health challenges. Her professional journey has taken her to the United Kingdom, Sweden, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. In 2023 she relocated from Holland back to Stockholm for the second time around and meets clients both online and in her office on Södermalm.
Living away from one’s native country comes with its unique set of psychological hurdles, alongside the everyday ups and downs of life. This holds true for global nomads, cross-cultural adults, and children alike.
In these articles Lysanne writes about the different challenges that face us in life, as expats and as ordinary human beings. She uses her own experience as a jumping off point for reflections on how to use the lessons from therapy to live a more contended and congruent life.
If you have specific topics or issues that you’d like Lysanne to explore in her articles, please reach out via the contact form on this website or directly through her personal website. Rest assured, your privacy and confidentiality will be upheld.
