Last night, I started working on our Christmas tree. I had not done that with much enthusiasm for a very long time.

After dinner, I began to wrap and twist yards and yards of lights around the stems and branches of the tree that has been with my family for the last 12 years. I’m not done yet. It will probably take me another day to finish.

I surveyed the decorations and decided that some of them needed to be retired and replaced with new ones. I gently placed the old ones in boxes, thinking of Christmases past when the children were much younger and my son, now 13, would sing the 12 days of Christmas as he hung the decorations on the tree.

Christmas this year somehow feels different. After many years, the joy I once had as a child anticipating Christmas once again fills every part of me—primarily, I guess, because I choose to remember how loved I am despite of my many flaws. How the Savior was born to us, because that’s how very much we are loved by Him.

The holidays can be difficult for many people, however, especially when the grief is new. The empty place at the table this year is the strongest reminder of that loss.  The Christmas holidays can be triggers for profound sadness.

Counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists become busier in the weeks leading to Christmas. The holidays, synonymous with love, friendship and family, bring to the surface many issues. Here are some ways that you can help yourselves or your loved ones cope with the coming holidays, especially when the grief or loss is very new.

Call for a family meeting. Get a consensus and decide how you would like to spend the holidays this year. It is not written in stone that the traditional family dinner has to be held at your home this year. If you feel like doing something else, tell your loved ones and relatives how you feel.

Reunions can be painful reminders of the loss, so if you don’t feel like partying on December 24th or December 25th you don’t have to. If your extended family truly loves you, they will understand and not insist on their way. Space to grieve becomes more important during the holiday season.

Break tradition and do something different.  Recreating what was can sometimes cause more sadness and remind you of the loss. If you usually celebrate the holidays at home, try to do something different this year. Travel if you can afford it, have dinner at a restaurant, or check into a hotel for Christmas or New Year’s eve.

Move the tree to a different place in the house, buy new ornaments, change the theme of your holiday décor. A family I know kept the empty space on their dinner table for Noche Buena for a couple of years after their son died.

Before the festivities, everyone would gather around the table and share a story about the family member who was no longer there. Then they would close in prayer. “That way, we didn’t feel guilty about celebrating because he was no longer around.”

Take care of you.  Traffic, crowds and the endless to-do list can put an added strain on your already grief-stricken heart. Make space each day to stop and just relax. Go to the spa if you need to, eat healthy (avoid too much sweets and junk food), sleep a little earlier so you can wake up earlier and not cram.

In the car, listen to music that soothes your nerves rather than rattling it further.  Take an early walk just as the sun rises, or in the late afternoons as the sun sets. The view, either way, can be breathtaking sometimes, wherever you are. Make sure to do something good for yourself each day.

Let the pain remain, but don’t dwell.  The pain is expected, so embrace it when it comes, but set a time to it. Allow yourself an x amount of hour/s each day to feel sad. If you are in a meeting or in a crowd, or in a mall, and you are suddenly overcome by an overwhelming amount of grief, that’s normal. Just excuse yourself and go someplace private and quiet and release the sadness.

Give of yourself. This sounds like an irony—how can you be expected to give of yourself when you have so many broken places, and you can hardly keep yourself together?

I have found time and again that the best way to overcome one’s sadness has always been to step out of the shadow of one’s grief and extend that help to others. Giving of yourself by caring for others is a wonderful way to honor those who have gone ahead.

If you have the energy to do so, find a charity or someone whom you would like to help.  Visit a hospital, an orphanage, an old folk’s home, an animal shelter. Whatever your energies will allow you to do, just go and do it. The best way for the fog of sadness to lift is to bring a little sunshine into someone else’s day.

I have found that to always work for me, I hope it will for you, too. Simply ask for the grace to do it and you will be enabled.

I write this on a day that is traditionally celebrated as Thanksgiving in other parts of the world. I opt to call it ThanksLiving because really, gratefulness is something that must be present in our hearts, in and out of the season, on a daily basis, no matter what we have been through.

But today especially, I thank God for bringing me to a place where I have found peace from all my broken pieces. As one Christian writer so beautifully put it, “As the days of my life unfold, I don’t want my story to merely reflect a woman who lost a child and endured, I want to have a faith that is constantly evolving and I want the Creator to be able to use me in the life I am living, not merely in the past. I survived.”

E-mail the author at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @cathybabao