December 12, 2025 • 13 mins
On this episode of “Tommy Talk,” Tommy opens up about navigating grief during the holiday season. Many of us feel pressure to “get through” the holidays or pretend we’re doing fine. But often, grief eases and softens when we allow it to exist; when we make space for it instead of pushing it down. Here are some practices that have helped me after the loss of my dear friend and mentor recently. For anyone going through their own grieving process this holiday season, this episode is for you.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey, guys, welcome to Tommy Talk. And today's topic is
holding space for grief during the holidays. So grief is
a it's a tricky thing because it never fully goes away.
And I talked about earlier this year how I lost
(00:23):
my mentor, and it's still very hard for me. I mean,
if anybody brings up loss or somebody passing away, I
feel the tears instantly forming in the back of my eyes,
desperate to come out. It's still fresh. And you know,
it's not something that I think about necessarily every second
(00:45):
of the day, but when something triggers a memory or
triggers me to think about my mentor who passed, I
feel it and I instantly just want to break down
and cry and fall apart. And that's grief, and that's grief.
It's a real complicated, understandably difficult thing to wrap your
(01:05):
head around, and it comes in waves, and you don't
ever fully stop grieving somebody you lose or have lost,
especially when it's fresh, especially when it happened not too
long ago. So the holidays can really it can make
it difficult because you want them with you. You feel
the sense of nostalgia and togetherness and then you look
(01:27):
at an empty chair at the table, or a text
that didn't come through, or your empty voicemails and you
don't see the name that you so badly want to see,
or maybe it's a post on Facebook she loved Facebook
that she would write every holiday season, and those things
are all not there anymore. So it can be a
(01:47):
really difficult thing to get through the season, and to
get through the holidays when you are losing that person
or have lost that person I should say in your life.
I think that the holidays do make you think about
people more that you lost, and they are described as
the most wonderful time of the year. And I am
(02:08):
a holiday die hard. I love Christmas time so much
and to me, it is the best time of the year.
But it also can be a painful time of year
for so many people. And that pain might come and
go and ebbs and flows, but it exists and it's there.
So the truth is that grief just doesn't take a holiday.
(02:30):
I would love to be able to put it away
and say leave me alone for the month. I want
to just be happy and joyous and celibratory. And that's
to say. All that's to say is I am not
going to not be those things, because I am, but
you do still feel the knife of pain every once
in a while, to put it dramatically, that might come
(02:51):
your way. So I think that there are ways to
honor your grief and make space for those moments so
that they don't make you fall apart, and so that
you don't feel completely debilitated when you're trying to be
joyous and celibratory with friends and family. There's a way
for all of that to exist grief, I think, at
(03:14):
least for me, I'm totally speaking from my experience. Grief
eases when I let it exist. So when I allow
myself to feel grief, it doesn't feel as painful as
it does when I try to push it away, because
I've been there and I've done that, and that's the worst.
So when I allow it to sneak in and take
(03:36):
over my body and then feel what I feel and
then move on from it until the next time it hits,
that's when I feel like I can process it in
the best way possible. So here are some ways that
I don't know can make your grief feel a little
bit less heavy this holiday season. And again, these are
(03:58):
things that work for me, so I hope this can
be helpful. I'm not this all knowing guru, but I
think that I know these help me feel like I
can be my strongest when I need to get through
those tougher times. The first thing is set boundaries. Set boundaries.
There's a lot of demands during the holidays. Can you
(04:19):
come to my Christmas party? Can you come to this
luncheon there's a company event, or if I have company
events where people are in town and they want to
see you. There's so much obligation and so many things
to do during the holiday season that if you're having
a bad day or you're just not feeling up for it,
it's okay to say no. It is okay. It is
(04:40):
one hundred percent okay to say no instead of saying
yes and going to something where you're then going to
fall apart, because that's not fair to you and you
don't want to be put in that position. So set
those boundaries. Know that if you are having an off
day and you just need to kind of be in
your private space and deal with what you're dealing with,
then do that, because then hopefully you'll wake up the
(05:01):
next day and feel much better, and then you can
go be celibratory or do something joyous with the people
you want, but don't beat yourself up. If you're having
one bad day and just need to be home, or
two bad days, it's okay. It's okay, and it's important
to set those boundaries. You absolutely have to do it.
I think creating a ritual of remembrance is also really
(05:23):
special and important, and that's helped me. So there's a
gorgeous church on my street and I've gone in a
few times and I've lit candles for Joanna, and that's
my mentor, and it just makes me feel close to her.
It makes me feel like she's with me. It makes
me feel like I'm honoring her. It makes me feel
like I'm keeping her memory alive. So I think finding
(05:44):
a ritual that allows you to remember the person in
your life is really important. I even lit a candle
in Milan when I was in Italy not too long ago,
for her. So that ritual for me, brings me a
lot of comfort and peace. It really does. But it
can be anything. It can be an ornament that you
hang to honor this person on your tree every year
(06:05):
and you look at it and it just makes you smile.
Maybe it's cooking a meal that makes you think of
this person, or that you know this person loved so
very much. I think the point of this is not
to dwell necessarily, but to honor, and honoring somebody is
a really beautiful thing. So yeah, I'm smiling right now
thinking about the candles I've lit for Joanna, and in fact,
(06:26):
I want to go light another one. I'm feeling very inspired.
I think it's also really important to confide in someone,
to lean on someone. And I'm going to be really
vulnerable with you in telling you that I have a
hard time with this. I have a very hard time
showing what I perceive as weakness, and it's not weakness.
We all know that it's not weakness to be a
human and feel, and that's something I work through. I
(06:49):
just never want to necessarily dump my problems or feelings
on someone else. And that's such a ridiculous way to think,
because that's what friends are for. They are there for
you to vent too. And I am very blessed that
I have some incredible people in my life who have
lifted me up when I need it at most. And
it's okay to confide in someone and say I'm really
having a hard time. I in fact just did that
(07:12):
with Geo, where he didn't realize I'm still kind of
struggling with the loss of Joanna because I don't vocalize
it a lot, and I just kind of had a
little mini breakdown and it caught him by surprise, I think,
because he would hope that I open up about when
I'm feeling sad. That's what he's for, right, He's so
supportive and amazing, But it's my own thing that I
(07:32):
have to work through, and I just, for whatever reason,
wasn't opening up about her or my aunt too sick,
and it all hit me at once and I had
a breakdown. So to avoid having those breakdowns, I think
it's really important to confide in somebody and talk things
through in real time as are happening, so that you
don't feel the weight of the world or I should say,
the weight of grief on your shoulders at all times,
(07:54):
because that is a really hard thing to feel, and
we don't deserve to feel that. It's not fair to
our and our being, not at all. I think it's
also really important to say that you should you should
give yourself permission to feel both joy and sorrow. They
(08:14):
can coexist. Sometimes you feel guilty for feeling happiness when
you think you should be mourning right or sometimes you
feel annoy that you're feeling sadness so much when you
should be feeling joy for the other blessings in your life.
Both can exist, and it's okay for them to both exist.
(08:39):
There's a world where they both very much do exist.
And I don't think we have to always pretend like
it's either one or the other. No, it's both. That's
human and that's okay. So allow yourself that grace to
feel that, because you're entitled to that, and nobody can
tell you when that grief should end or when that
grief shouldn't end. It's it's important to not beat yourself
(09:00):
up crying about something one day. It doesn't mean you're broken,
it means you're human. And then, like I said earlier,
you hopefully pick yourself up and carry on and have
another great day after that, because that's what happens. There's
waves when you're grieving someone. So it's okay to feel
both of those things. I think that's a really important
thing to note. I also think taking care of yourself
is so important we forget to do that so often, right,
(09:23):
and when you're really feeling grief, take care of yourself.
And I'm guilty of this too, Like I told you all,
I'm not perfect. I get stuck in the work cycle
and that fifteen minute walk I wanted to do to
clear my mind when I'm feeling a little heavy or
full of grief, I don't take and then I feel worse.
You know, Go on that walk, Go do that workout class,
Go schedule FaceTime with your best friend. Do the things
(09:46):
that feed your soul and that bring you peace, especially
when you're grieving. You have to take care of yourself.
And I know so many of you are working your
butts off and you have families and you're always taking
care of other people. But you can't fully take care
of other people if you don't take care of yourself.
So try to get a little bit more sleep, try
to eat the foods that make you feel good, because
(10:06):
you deserve that. You deserve that, and when you don't
have all of that, it intensifies your grief because you're
feeling overworked and exhausted and mentally depleted. So you really
want to try to practice as much self care as
you can, because that's how you can show up for
yourself in the best way possible and other people. And
I think that Lastly, if there's a tradition this holiday
(10:28):
season that's just too painful for you to participate in,
don't It's okay. You can take a year off. No
one says you have to do the same thing every year.
If it reminds you too much of somebody and it's
too painful and the grief is too hard, switch it up.
Say you know what, I'm going to put that one
away for now. I'm going to start a new tradition.
Whatever that tradition may be, whatever you decide you want
(10:50):
it to be, and maybe that's part of honoring the person.
But start a new tradition, that's okay. There are no rules.
You cannot put the pressure on yourself to be this
warrior or when you're not feeling that way, honor and
acknowledge your feelings. It's something I'm working on because Lord
knows I need help doing that. It's it's just so
(11:10):
important for you. I guess I want to wrap up
by saying that if you're feeling grief this holiday season,
it's not a sign that you're failing or it's not
a sign that you're, you know, doing a bad job.
(11:32):
It's a sign that you're human. And grief is a
sign that you have loved somebody so incredibly much in
your life that them not being here is painful. And
that's okay. It's okay to feel that. I certainly feel it.
I feel it every day in some way, shape or form.
I tremendously feel the loss of this person in my
(11:54):
life because of how pivotal she was to me. And
that's okay. It doesn't mean I'm doing a bad job
at life or that I'm dwelling in negativity. That is grief.
But hopefully you can pick yourself up and have a
better day the next day, and that when those waves
of grief come at you, you can handle it, maybe
a little gentler or a little better. With some of
the things I talked about today, we all miss the
(12:18):
people in our lives that are no longer here. The
holidays make us think of them, and I think that
as long as we honor those memories and hold those
people close, that's all we can do. And all we
can do is the best we can do, and that's that.
But just remember to be human. It's okay. It's okay
(12:39):
to be human. I have to remind myself of that
all the time. It is okay to be human this
holiday season and feel the things you feel, let yourself
feel them, and hopefully you have some great days mixed
in with the days where the grief is a little
bit heavier. I feel you, I see you. I hope
that if you're grieving this holiday season, you can still
find some time to enjoy the joyous things about it
(13:02):
and lean on the people that make you feel safe
and secure because they got you, and I hope you
know that I got you after listening to this I've
Never Said This Before is hosted by Me Tommy Dedario.
This podcast is executive produced by Andrew Puglisi at iHeartRadio
(13:23):
and by Me Tommy, with editing by Joshua Colaudney. I've
Never Said This Before is part of the Elvis Duran
podcast Network on iHeart Podcasts. For more, rate review and
subscribe to our show and if you liked this episode,
tell your friends. Until next time, I'm Tommy de Dario.
Hey, guys, welcome to Tommy Talk. And today's topic is
holding space for grief during the holidays. So grief is
a it's a tricky thing because it never fully goes away.
And I talked about earlier this year how I lost
(00:23):
my mentor, and it's still very hard for me. I mean,
if anybody brings up loss or somebody passing away, I
feel the tears instantly forming in the back of my eyes,
desperate to come out. It's still fresh. And you know,
it's not something that I think about necessarily every second
(00:45):
of the day, but when something triggers a memory or
triggers me to think about my mentor who passed, I
feel it and I instantly just want to break down
and cry and fall apart. And that's grief, and that's grief.
It's a real complicated, understandably difficult thing to wrap your
(01:05):
head around, and it comes in waves, and you don't
ever fully stop grieving somebody you lose or have lost,
especially when it's fresh, especially when it happened not too
long ago. So the holidays can really it can make
it difficult because you want them with you. You feel
the sense of nostalgia and togetherness and then you look
(01:27):
at an empty chair at the table, or a text
that didn't come through, or your empty voicemails and you
don't see the name that you so badly want to see,
or maybe it's a post on Facebook she loved Facebook
that she would write every holiday season, and those things
are all not there anymore. So it can be a
(01:47):
really difficult thing to get through the season, and to
get through the holidays when you are losing that person
or have lost that person I should say in your life.
I think that the holidays do make you think about
people more that you lost, and they are described as
the most wonderful time of the year. And I am
(02:08):
a holiday die hard. I love Christmas time so much
and to me, it is the best time of the year.
But it also can be a painful time of year
for so many people. And that pain might come and
go and ebbs and flows, but it exists and it's there.
So the truth is that grief just doesn't take a holiday.
(02:30):
I would love to be able to put it away
and say leave me alone for the month. I want
to just be happy and joyous and celibratory. And that's
to say. All that's to say is I am not
going to not be those things, because I am, but
you do still feel the knife of pain every once
in a while, to put it dramatically, that might come
(02:51):
your way. So I think that there are ways to
honor your grief and make space for those moments so
that they don't make you fall apart, and so that
you don't feel completely debilitated when you're trying to be
joyous and celibratory with friends and family. There's a way
for all of that to exist grief, I think, at
(03:14):
least for me, I'm totally speaking from my experience. Grief
eases when I let it exist. So when I allow
myself to feel grief, it doesn't feel as painful as
it does when I try to push it away, because
I've been there and I've done that, and that's the worst.
So when I allow it to sneak in and take
(03:36):
over my body and then feel what I feel and
then move on from it until the next time it hits,
that's when I feel like I can process it in
the best way possible. So here are some ways that
I don't know can make your grief feel a little
bit less heavy this holiday season. And again, these are
(03:58):
things that work for me, so I hope this can
be helpful. I'm not this all knowing guru, but I
think that I know these help me feel like I
can be my strongest when I need to get through
those tougher times. The first thing is set boundaries. Set boundaries.
There's a lot of demands during the holidays. Can you
(04:19):
come to my Christmas party? Can you come to this
luncheon there's a company event, or if I have company
events where people are in town and they want to
see you. There's so much obligation and so many things
to do during the holiday season that if you're having
a bad day or you're just not feeling up for it,
it's okay to say no. It is okay. It is
(04:40):
one hundred percent okay to say no instead of saying
yes and going to something where you're then going to
fall apart, because that's not fair to you and you
don't want to be put in that position. So set
those boundaries. Know that if you are having an off
day and you just need to kind of be in
your private space and deal with what you're dealing with,
then do that, because then hopefully you'll wake up the
(05:01):
next day and feel much better, and then you can
go be celibratory or do something joyous with the people
you want, but don't beat yourself up. If you're having
one bad day and just need to be home, or
two bad days, it's okay. It's okay, and it's important
to set those boundaries. You absolutely have to do it.
I think creating a ritual of remembrance is also really
(05:23):
special and important, and that's helped me. So there's a
gorgeous church on my street and I've gone in a
few times and I've lit candles for Joanna, and that's
my mentor, and it just makes me feel close to her.
It makes me feel like she's with me. It makes
me feel like I'm honoring her. It makes me feel
like I'm keeping her memory alive. So I think finding
(05:44):
a ritual that allows you to remember the person in
your life is really important. I even lit a candle
in Milan when I was in Italy not too long ago,
for her. So that ritual for me, brings me a
lot of comfort and peace. It really does. But it
can be anything. It can be an ornament that you
hang to honor this person on your tree every year
(06:05):
and you look at it and it just makes you smile.
Maybe it's cooking a meal that makes you think of
this person, or that you know this person loved so
very much. I think the point of this is not
to dwell necessarily, but to honor, and honoring somebody is
a really beautiful thing. So yeah, I'm smiling right now
thinking about the candles I've lit for Joanna, and in fact,
(06:26):
I want to go light another one. I'm feeling very inspired.
I think it's also really important to confide in someone,
to lean on someone. And I'm going to be really
vulnerable with you in telling you that I have a
hard time with this. I have a very hard time
showing what I perceive as weakness, and it's not weakness.
We all know that it's not weakness to be a
human and feel, and that's something I work through. I
(06:49):
just never want to necessarily dump my problems or feelings
on someone else. And that's such a ridiculous way to think,
because that's what friends are for. They are there for
you to vent too. And I am very blessed that
I have some incredible people in my life who have
lifted me up when I need it at most. And
it's okay to confide in someone and say I'm really
having a hard time. I in fact just did that
(07:12):
with Geo, where he didn't realize I'm still kind of
struggling with the loss of Joanna because I don't vocalize
it a lot, and I just kind of had a
little mini breakdown and it caught him by surprise, I think,
because he would hope that I open up about when
I'm feeling sad. That's what he's for, right, He's so
supportive and amazing, But it's my own thing that I
(07:32):
have to work through, and I just, for whatever reason,
wasn't opening up about her or my aunt too sick,
and it all hit me at once and I had
a breakdown. So to avoid having those breakdowns, I think
it's really important to confide in somebody and talk things
through in real time as are happening, so that you
don't feel the weight of the world or I should say,
the weight of grief on your shoulders at all times,
(07:54):
because that is a really hard thing to feel, and
we don't deserve to feel that. It's not fair to
our and our being, not at all. I think it's
also really important to say that you should you should
give yourself permission to feel both joy and sorrow. They
(08:14):
can coexist. Sometimes you feel guilty for feeling happiness when
you think you should be mourning right or sometimes you
feel annoy that you're feeling sadness so much when you
should be feeling joy for the other blessings in your life.
Both can exist, and it's okay for them to both exist.
(08:39):
There's a world where they both very much do exist.
And I don't think we have to always pretend like
it's either one or the other. No, it's both. That's
human and that's okay. So allow yourself that grace to
feel that, because you're entitled to that, and nobody can
tell you when that grief should end or when that
grief shouldn't end. It's it's important to not beat yourself
(09:00):
up crying about something one day. It doesn't mean you're broken,
it means you're human. And then, like I said earlier,
you hopefully pick yourself up and carry on and have
another great day after that, because that's what happens. There's
waves when you're grieving someone. So it's okay to feel
both of those things. I think that's a really important
thing to note. I also think taking care of yourself
is so important we forget to do that so often, right,
(09:23):
and when you're really feeling grief, take care of yourself.
And I'm guilty of this too, Like I told you all,
I'm not perfect. I get stuck in the work cycle
and that fifteen minute walk I wanted to do to
clear my mind when I'm feeling a little heavy or
full of grief, I don't take and then I feel worse.
You know, Go on that walk, Go do that workout class,
Go schedule FaceTime with your best friend. Do the things
(09:46):
that feed your soul and that bring you peace, especially
when you're grieving. You have to take care of yourself.
And I know so many of you are working your
butts off and you have families and you're always taking
care of other people. But you can't fully take care
of other people if you don't take care of yourself.
So try to get a little bit more sleep, try
to eat the foods that make you feel good, because
(10:06):
you deserve that. You deserve that, and when you don't
have all of that, it intensifies your grief because you're
feeling overworked and exhausted and mentally depleted. So you really
want to try to practice as much self care as
you can, because that's how you can show up for
yourself in the best way possible and other people. And
I think that Lastly, if there's a tradition this holiday
(10:28):
season that's just too painful for you to participate in,
don't It's okay. You can take a year off. No
one says you have to do the same thing every year.
If it reminds you too much of somebody and it's
too painful and the grief is too hard, switch it up.
Say you know what, I'm going to put that one
away for now. I'm going to start a new tradition.
Whatever that tradition may be, whatever you decide you want
(10:50):
it to be, and maybe that's part of honoring the person.
But start a new tradition, that's okay. There are no rules.
You cannot put the pressure on yourself to be this
warrior or when you're not feeling that way, honor and
acknowledge your feelings. It's something I'm working on because Lord
knows I need help doing that. It's it's just so
(11:10):
important for you. I guess I want to wrap up
by saying that if you're feeling grief this holiday season,
it's not a sign that you're failing or it's not
a sign that you're, you know, doing a bad job.
(11:32):
It's a sign that you're human. And grief is a
sign that you have loved somebody so incredibly much in
your life that them not being here is painful. And
that's okay. It's okay to feel that. I certainly feel it.
I feel it every day in some way, shape or form.
I tremendously feel the loss of this person in my
(11:54):
life because of how pivotal she was to me. And
that's okay. It doesn't mean I'm doing a bad job
at life or that I'm dwelling in negativity. That is grief.
But hopefully you can pick yourself up and have a
better day the next day, and that when those waves
of grief come at you, you can handle it, maybe
a little gentler or a little better. With some of
the things I talked about today, we all miss the
(12:18):
people in our lives that are no longer here. The
holidays make us think of them, and I think that
as long as we honor those memories and hold those
people close, that's all we can do. And all we
can do is the best we can do, and that's that.
But just remember to be human. It's okay. It's okay
(12:39):
to be human. I have to remind myself of that
all the time. It is okay to be human this
holiday season and feel the things you feel, let yourself
feel them, and hopefully you have some great days mixed
in with the days where the grief is a little
bit heavier. I feel you, I see you. I hope
that if you're grieving this holiday season, you can still
find some time to enjoy the joyous things about it
(13:02):
and lean on the people that make you feel safe
and secure because they got you, and I hope you
know that I got you after listening to this I've
Never Said This Before is hosted by Me Tommy Dedario.
This podcast is executive produced by Andrew Puglisi at iHeartRadio
(13:23):
and by Me Tommy, with editing by Joshua Colaudney. I've
Never Said This Before is part of the Elvis Duran
podcast Network on iHeart Podcasts. For more, rate review and
subscribe to our show and if you liked this episode,
tell your friends. Until next time, I'm Tommy de Dario.
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