Coping with Cultural Bereavement During the Holidays

"As we prepare for the holidays, decorate the house, and plan gatherings and visits, we also reflect on past holidays. We remember good times, meals, festivities, and past rituals. These reflections may prompt us to bring out our old photo albums and reminisce. We might feel homesick for the homes, communities, and societies that now only exist in our memories."

"Cultural bereavement is experienced when ways of life have irrevocably changed. It could result from the loss of a loved one, the loss of health, the loss of community through a move, the loss of a country due to migration and immigration, the loss of social trust due to political change, and the loss of a way of life due to social change."

Cultural bereavement arises when familiar cultural patterns, rituals, foods, music, or communities are lost or transformed. Holidays often intensify cultural bereavement through memories, rituals, and reminders of past gatherings. Immigrants and older adults commonly experience strong cultural bereavement when migration, social change, or loss of health or loved ones alter their cultural reality. Cultural bereavement can produce feelings of emptiness, sadness, marginalization, silencing, loneliness, and isolation. Coping is nonlinear and complex, requiring both loss-oriented strategies that honor grief and restoration-oriented strategies that rebuild meaning and adapt to new cultural contexts. Resilient coping combines remembrance, adaptation, and community reconnection.

Read at Psychology Today