Around the Web: Surviving the Holidays

While writing and researching last week's article on surviving the holidays when you have bullies in your family, I found so many interesting resources on a variety of topics around surviving the holidays that I wanted to share with you. Enjoy.


Coping With Holidays After the Death of a Loved One
By Kim Kenney (via LiveStrong.com)
Grieving for a loved one is never easy, but the holidays seem to deepen sorrow, loneliness, guilt, anxiety and depression. These feelings are completely normal during the holiday season, according to the website Hospice. According to the Office for Victims of Crime, you can manage the holidays better by taking charge of the season instead of letting it take charge of you.
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Helping Someone With a Mental Illness Through the Holidays
by Natasha Tracy (via HealthyPlace.com)
The first thing that loved ones need to do is to respect the coping mechanisms the person with the mental illness has developed all year long. This means, respect their routine. Respect their need for space. Respect that they don’t drink. Respect that they need to exercise and eat and sleep on schedule. And so on. It’s tempting to say to the person, “oh why can’t you just loosen up for the holidays?” but it’s exactly that attitude that will get them into trouble. It’s critical that you support them in their healthy decisions because it’s hard enough to make healthy choices already without the support of the people who love you.
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Interfaith Family Bullying: When Do You Stop Fighting And Just Give Up?
By Rachel Figueroa-Leviny (via Kveller.com)
My father’s family is very large. My mother’s family, like too many post-pogrom and WWII Jewish immigrant families, is very very VERY small. My recently deceased grandfather was the last of his surname. So most of my relatives are of the non-Jewish persuasion. My mother insisted that my brother and I engage with the family to the best of our ability, so that we would “have family.” So we did. My mother put up with constant bullying, and my brother and I tried to sort through the lies (straight up lies) that our paternal grandmother spread about our mother. Say what now? Bullying?
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How to Deal with the Verbal Bully Over the Christmas Period
By Alex Gadd (via Beat-the-Bully-Book.com)
If you happen to be one of those people for whom the bully is a family member, then the Christmas holidays might not be that much of an exciting time at all.  Throughout the rest of the year, you might have been able to keep your distance from such a person but come Christmas, you may be expected to attend the family functions (along with the bully).  And if the person in question is a verbal bully, they may openly be attacking you in the form of nasty comments right under the noses of others. A perfect example of such a bully is the family member who openly makes comments about you in such a manner that while others in earshot would hear a perfectly innocent interpretation, only you and the bully would get the real interpretation behind the comment.
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