Author Ken Rohlf discusses his children’s book, “Christmas Sun,” which addresses, coping with grief during the holidays, after losing a loved one. Inspired by his personal experience of losing his wife on Christmas Day, Ken shares five strategies to ease the pain during the festive season. He emphasizes the importance of honoring memories and keeping the legacy of loved ones alive. This episode explores handling grief uniquely, maintaining family traditions, and introduces the concept of using symbolic ornaments for remembrance. Join host Myrna Young as she delves into Ken’s journey and insights on this heartfelt topic.
Download the Podcast Here:
Key Takeaways
Grieving the loss of a loved one requires personalized approaches; there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
Maintaining traditions and creating new ones can help families honor and remember lost loved ones during the holidays.
Books, such as “Christmas Sun,” provide tools to keep memories alive and facilitate conversations about loss with children.
The holiday season often brings to the surface the joy and warmth of family gatherings. For those who’ve experienced a loss, it can also highlight absence and evoke memories that trigger grief. In this enlightening discussion between Myrna Young and Ken Rohlf, author of “Christmas Sun.” We explore coping with grief during the holidays and how the holidays can become a time of healing and remembrance. Through this heartfelt conversation, Ken offers profound insights into navigating the first holiday season without a loved one. Drawing from his own journey following the loss of his wife.
Coping With Grief During The Holidays: Finding Your Personal Path to Healing
There’s No One Right Way to Grieve
Ken Rohlf begins with an essential acknowledgment; grief is not a linear journey.
Echoing his sentiments, “everybody wants a cookie-cutter solution, but we’re not cookies,” emphasizing the uniqueness of each person’s path through loss.
The holiday season can exacerbate the emotional turmoil accompanying grief, making it crucial to understand there isn’t a standardized approach to coping. We learn that embracing each family member’s different stage of grief is key, ensuring everyone feels heard and respected.
Ken’s experience serves as a powerful reminder: their family faced the harrowing challenge of spending Christmas Day—also his wife’s passing anniversary—in hospice care. Such a profound personal tragedy necessitates understanding that emotions like melancholy can be deeply interwoven with festive occasions. Acknowledging emotions, consulting experts, and preparing collaboratively as a family are practical steps to forging a personal path through the season’s complexity.
Coping With Grief During The Holidays: Create New Traditions
Preserving Memories Through Activities
Even in sorrow, the potential for new joyous traditions shines through as a beacon of hope. Coping With Grief During The Holidays, Ken shares how his extended family embraced change. We decided to gather at a cabin two weeks before Christmas for a more joyful celebration, sidestepping the melancholy of Christmas Day itself. This shift allows them to remember the past while enjoying the present.
Ken’s candid sharing that “we have changed things up” is a testament to adaptability, which is crucial for healing. Ensuring that family traditions are respected but also flexible enough to incorporate new activities honors the memory of the deceased while fostering a sense of continuity and hope.
Through “Christmas Sun,” Ken offers a way to create a tangible tradition with an ornament that represents the lost loved one. The book serves not only as an engaging story for children but also as a “prompt,” as Ken elaborates, “to find ways to remember and honor your special person.” Incorporating such symbols into family festivities can nurture a legacy of love that transcends generations.
Embracing Memory-Making
Storytelling as a Means of Immortality
A poignant theme emerging from Ken is the power of stories to immortalize. By quoting, “we all die twice…the second time when our name is mentioned for the last time,” Ken underscores the enduring impact of remembering those who’ve passed. Storytelling can transform grief into a celebration of life, ensuring that loved ones’ values and experiences continue to inspire and guide future generations.
In “Christmas Sun,” the protagonists learn about Coping With Grief During The Holidays from Grandma Bear’s kind gestures and attributes. Particularly her attentive nature, which Ken fondly recalls from his wife’s life. This approach allows children and adults alike to connect with the personality and humanity of someone they’ve never met. As encapsulated by Ken, it’s about “telling stories about your people,” a sentiment that aligns storytelling with the preservation of a person’s essence. Making their legacy an intrinsic part of family tradition.
Reflecting on Legacy and Tradition
Through Ken Rohlf’s story and guidance, we navigate the myriad emotions that entwine with holiday celebrations post-loss. The path to healing is marked by acknowledging personal grief journeys, adapting traditions, and using stories to keep loved ones alive in heart and memory. Whether through storytelling, as shown in “Christmas Sun,” or by actively engaging family members in new traditions, embracing each element of the past enriches our present and future.
Ken’s dialogue with Myrna offers not only solace but also actionable steps for anyone coping with grief during the holidays. Grappling with loss during these poignant times. The extraordinary resounding message is of crafting a legacy that thrives in tradition and memory, one that serves not just as a tribute to those we’ve lost but as a perennial source of comfort and connection for those who remain. In doing so, we ensure that the spirit of those who have passed continues to illuminate the lives of future generations.
Additional Resources
Social Media: Search for Ken Rohlf for more insights
https://www.kenrohlfbooks.com/
