I posted recently about the holidays and how they can be so difficult. I promised to write more about grief and loss, and how to celebrate the holidays if you’ve suffered a terrible loss in your life.

You may not want to celebrate at all. At best, this might be a quiet year for you. No lights, no big parties, and maybe you’re even tempted to forget the holidays altogether and work through the whole season. All of these feelings are normal, and I have only one suggestion:

Do something, no matter how small. Sometimes people in grief will simply light one candle on an important day–a day like Thanksgiving or Christmas or New Year’s, a day that feels empty and cruel and cold without the person they love. But they do light that candle. They light it because as awful as it might be to keep a holiday in the midst of such raw absence, such deep grief, it is even worse to deny that there are special days. It’s worse because it can actually deepen the sense of loss. Not only did your beloved die, but New Year’s died, too. Not only did you lose your job, or suffer a terrible health crisis, or experience another kind of personal tragedy, but Christmas died, too.

If you’re going through something like this right now, then the holidays probably won’t be festive or “merry” or cheerful. But they could be a way for you to stop, and rest, and breathe, and, yes, grieve. Most retailers won’t tell you this, but the holidays are good for that sort of thing too.

Sometimes November and December are called “the dying of the year,” meaning that it’s a good time–a time when (in the Northern hemisphere) the earth herself is dying into winter–to reflect on our own experiences of loss and death, and wait for renewal and hope as the year turns. I encourage you to do this hard work in your own life.

And–I mean this seriously–Happy Holidays.

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I work with (and know) people who don’t believe in God and wonder what they should do (if anything) about Thanksgiving. Who exactly are we thanking, and for what?

For starters, Thanksgiving is not a religious holiday. It’s a national holiday. Of course, when Thanksgiving was first proclaimed as a holiday, it was intended to be a day to thank God for all the blessings of this life. But America is not a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation. We intentionally separate religion from our political structure. So for me, Thanksgiving is not necessarily religious.

(Actually, God is not necessarily religious, but that’s a topic for another post!)

But Thanksgiving is about ultimate reality. One does not have to believe in God to participate in ultimate reality. It is a fundamentally human thing to do. Life is about all kinds of little realities–work, getting groceries, paying bills, and so on–but it is also about ultimate reality: the meaning of existence, the beauty around us, the strength and beauty within us, the deepest hopes and concerns of our lives. Ultimate reality is anything we judge to be Real (capital R), anything profoundly important, anything that captures our imagination, anything that frightens us, challenges us, moves us.

Thanksgiving is about our relationship with ultimate reality. Thanksgiving is a way for us to turn our attention toward these deeper concerns, and to turn toward them in a spirit of gratitude. Whether or not you believe in God, maybe I can persuade you to believe in the value of celebrating special days like Thanksgiving–days that are different than your usual Thursdays, your usual Mondays, your everyday life. And on these days–and particularly this day–I hope all of us can turn toward the most important dimensions of our lives, toward all that makes life worth living–love, truth, beauty, justice–and reflect on these things with gratitude.

Plus, does anything taste better than stuffing?

Happy Thanksgiving!

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I’m offering two ways to work with me in couples therapy and stretch your dollars during these difficult economic times. Both of these opportunities are designed to make your experience more powerful and helpful for you:

1) I’m offering up to three sessions at 30% off–$70 per session–for couples who would be willing to participate with me in a study in which the sessions would be videotaped. (The taping would be completely secure and the recording would be destroyed after use.) I’m hoping to do this study within the next 30-60 days, so let me know right away if you’re interested. The video would be used in a consulting session between me and a therapist supervisor affiliated with my professional association. We would discuss my approach to couples therapy, specific interventions I did in the sessions, and suggestions for improving my work. I would also be able to bring back to you the supervisor’s thoughts and insights about your issues. It might sound scary, but I speak from experience when I say that it is highly useful for both you and me in our work together.

2) I’m offering three sessions at 15% off–$85 per session–for couples who are willing to come three times in one week. I’m doing this because recent research shows that doing couples therapy in a more intense format–three times in one week rather than three times over three weeks–yields better results. Let me know if you’d like to do this, and we can get it scheduled for a week in December.

I hope to see you soon!

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Okay, it happened. Someone I know read my own written work, so of course I’m in big trouble! (Well, at least a little trouble. Or at least I am being heavily teased.) A member of my own family read this post, and now I have some explaining to do.

So here goes.

When I was writing about family dynamics around the holidays, I was of course not writing about my own family, which is a wonderful group of kind, generous, emotionally mature, and physically attractive people.

Okay, I didn’t manage to write that whole sentence without rolling my eyes and laughing. And since I’m just digging the hole deeper, I should probably just give up and say this:

1) If you are suffering the misfortune of being a member of my family, please know that I love coming home for the holidays, even though sometimes we do have a crazy dynamic; and

2) It’s all the other family members who are crazy, not you and me!!

*sigh* I deserve everything I get!

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If you have already worked with me, you probably know I love metaphors. (And sometimes I get a little carried away, but I’m working on that!) I have a new metaphor for relationships that might help you understand your relationship and also get a better idea of what couples counseling is like.

Imagine that your relationship is a huge room. The room is filled with the life of your relationship–your memories, your shared beliefs, the tension you have (healthy or not) about your differences, the “magic,” if you want to call it that…no, the mystery of the two of you and what you have together.

And inside that room is an issue–a problem, if you want to call it that. It’s the issue that brings the two of you to couples counseling. And this is where the image of a room can be helpful: the issue is not sex, or money, or your parents, or someone’s abuse history, or you name it. Those are all important things, but they are not the issue. They are the windows through which you can look at the issue.

Example: sex isn’t going well, and hasn’t for a while. We can talk about that in terms of making your sex life better, but the only way to do that well is to use your sex problem as a window to see the issue in the room. The issue could be how one or both of you handles (or doesn’t handle) anxiety. (In fact, that’s probably most often what the issue is.) But if we change the subject from sex to, let’s say, the fights you have about money, we are then looking through a different window to see the same issue.

That means that if we address the real issue by talking about sex, there’s a good chance your usual money argument will change–for better or worse. You may think that your problem is, let’s say, your partner’s habit of lying. But that’s just another window: looking through the window of “you think your partner has a habit of lying,” we might see a deeper issue about honesty and intimacy in your relationship, and how that issue causes problems in lots of areas.

I mention all of this to give you a little more to think about before you come in for couples work. You will probably find, when you get here, that we’re not talking about the thing that you think is bugging you. And if we do talk about it, we’re going to use it as a window to deal with the central issue in your relationship.

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Have you noticed the Starbucks cups are red again? The leaves are barely off the trees, we’ve just managed to elect a new president, and here we go: the Holidays! For a lot of people, this is not good news.

So here’s my confession: I love the holidays. I’m weird in this way, I think. Around November 11, 12, 13, I start to long for the lights and the trees and even the music. (Obviously I don’t work retail!) But I understand that there are several reasons not to like them, including–

1) Something terrible or sad happened this year, or during the holidays in the past, and all the hoopla just reminds you of what (or who) you lost.

2) You’re keenly aware that not everyone can afford food and shelter–let alone those red Starbucks lattes–and the holidays are a cruel reminder of the fundamental unfairness and injustice in human life.

3) The holidays are just another way for you and your family to go through your usual drama, the typical family dynamic, your own version of the movie “Home for the Holidays“. You’re under all kinds of pressure to fly home and pretend you’re not an adult with your own opinions, your own rituals, your own full life. Yuck.

In my work I usually help people wrestle with 1) and 3). More on 1) soon. Right now–mid-November–you might be planning this year’s holiday family visit. You’re buying your ticket, and you’re already groaning. What to do?

As hard as it sounds–and it’s hard–you might want to challenge yourself this year. Your mother just called and told you the plans changed, forget what you’ve planned, we’re doing it this way, and if you really love us you’ll show up a day earlier… And maybe she didn’t even phrase it as a question. You have your Comply with The Family Or Else marching orders. As hard as it sounds, think about not following those orders. Think about standing a little taller, even with your mother. Think about how you say to yourself every year, “Oh well, I just need to get through the holidays. If I don’t do what they say, they’ll just make it even more miserable for me.” Consider the possibility that yes, they could make things more miserable, but yes, it’s worth it!

It could sound something like this: “Mom, I know you want me to do ______________ this year, but my plan is to do ______________. I know that is disappointing, but I need to stick with my plans. I’ve really been looking forward to them. I hope you can understand. I love you and I’ll see you on the 22nd…”

As I typed that, I shuddered a couple of times. Believe me, I know how hard it can be to stand up to people you love who are close to you, important to you, and pushing you to do the holidays their way. But when you give in completely, you end up losing yourself in the family dynamic and having (at best) an OK time, not a great time. You avoid the pain of standing tall, but you also avoid the delight–even the ecstasy!–that comes when you take a stand for yourself.

If you think this just won’t work because your mother–or everyone–will only push back harder, you’re half right. They will push back harder, and you could really bring on a lot of hostility. You would definitely be stirring the pot. But how else will you change your experience of the holidays? How else can your whole family grow and change? Families (and couples) change when one person stands tall, despite the hostility and resistence (and guilt-trip attempts!) that follow.

In the short term, standing tall won’t “work,” if by working you mean a pain-free holiday season. But think about hanging in there, for your own sake and for the sake of those you love. It’s worth it. So instead of wishing you “happy” holidays, I’ll wish you ecstatic holidays, and the strength and will to make them happen!

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I often tell clients when we first meet that I don’t like first sessions. I struggle with them because they’re never long enough. I get a lot of information and most often we make a good connection and get down to work, but then the hour’s up and we often have to wait another whole week to continue our work together. Then I realized: wait! This is my practice! I can have longer first sessions if I want to! (I spent a lot of years working in agencies where someone else made the rules, so old habits die hard.)

So it’s official: when we meet for the first time, we’ll meet for 90 minutes. It’ll cost the same–$100/session–but we’ll have more time to really get going in our work together.

And if you’re a current client who has already met me at least once, I’m offering you a free half hour in one of your future sessions. After all, it’s not your fault it took me until now to make this change!

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Okay, today I’m going to use clouds and sky as a metaphor. It’s probably not a surprise that I am thrilled by yesterday’s election results. But there was one major loss: Proposition 8 passed in California, possibly invalidating the marriages of many Californians and setting us back in the struggle for equality.

Andrew Sullivan, a gay conservative (and Obama-supporting) blogger, wrote a great post about this. It’s worth a read. And he’s right: Proposition 8 will be reversed; it’s inevitable. But the fight for equality continues.

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When I was setting up my Web site a little over a year ago, I decided on a simple, bluish look. I love partly cloudy days, with white clouds tinged with gray floating beneath a deep blue sky. I suppose I could think up a reason why this should be a therapist’s look–you know, life has its share of clouds, etc.–but that’s more than a little corny. The real reason is that I simply love these images.

Turns out this love is genetic. My dad sent me a collection of sky and sunset photos recently, partly inspired by my site. See below for my favorite. I’m like my father–and I like my father!–in ways large and small. This is one of them. Today is shaping up to be a dull gray day in Seattle. Maybe tomorrow–in more ways than one!–will have a more dramatic and inspiring view.

Photo by Gary Crippen

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