Grief, Memory, and the Things We Carry into December

There’s a line in the song that goes:
“And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters but no pearls.”

If the holidays stir something tender, complicated, or heavy in you, you’re not alone.

This season often magnifies grief, not just the grief of people we’ve lost, but the grief of years that didn’t go the way we hoped, relationships we struggled to repair, mistakes we regret, or versions of ourselves we miss. Even joy can feel layered, like it has shadows around the edges.

Nostalgia mixes with loss.
Gratitude mixes with exhaustion.
Hope mixes with the fear that maybe we won’t change the patterns we meant to change.

One of the most healing things you can offer yourself is permission to feel everything without rushing it toward resolution.

You don’t need to “fix” grief.
You don’t need to force joy.
You don’t need to pretend the year didn’t bruise you in ways that still sting.

Instead, consider:

• What memory is resurfacing because it wants gentleness?

• What regret or shame is asking to be acknowledged, not judged?

• What part of you needs compassion rather than pressure?

If this month feels tender, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
It means you’re being honest.

Why This Song Still Finds Me Every December

I was listening to A Long December the other day while I was working, and something in it stopped me for a moment. It wasn’t dramatic, just that familiar pull the song seems to have this time of year. There’s an emotional truth inside it that finds me every December, no matter how many years pass.

It’s not just nostalgia.
It’s not just the season.
It’s the way this song manages to hold so many human experiences at once:
the ache of distance, the sting of regret, the weight of another long year, and the quiet, almost reluctant hope that things can shift.

Every time I hear it, I’m reminded of the emotional landscapes we carry, the parts of us that feel worn down, the moments we wish we could redo, the shame or guilt we tuck away, the relationships where distance grew in the spaces we weren’t paying attention to. And also the longing… for reconnection, for softness, for something warmer than what we’ve been living in.

So this December, I wanted to spend a little time with the themes the song brings up for me, not to dissect it, but to sit with the emotional honesty it invites. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing short reflections on some of these themes: the accumulation of the year, the grief that resurfaces in winter, the drift that happens inside relationships, the quiet hope that refuses to disappear, and the seasonal cycles we move through as humans.

If you read one post or all of them, my hope is that something in this series helps you pause, breathe, and reflect on your own story from this past year. Not with pressure, and not with judgment, but with the kind of gentle honesty this song seems to call out in all of us.

Sometimes we need a moment of reflection.
Sometimes we need a song.
And sometimes we need a reminder that it’s okay to begin again.