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Tallgrass Spiritual Retreat Center:
Where Women Find their Way
1780 Thurman Creelk Road
Matfield Green, Kansas 66862
620.753.3465
Rev. Billie Blair, Director
Tallgrass Spiritual Retreat Center
Where Women Find Their Way
Blue Christmas: Touching Grief
December 19, 2008
Fri 9:30am - 3:30pm
Fee: $36, includes lunch
Facilitator: Rev. Billie Blair
Elvis Presley sang:
I'll have a blue Christmas without you.
I'll be so blue just thinking about you.
Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree.
Won't be the same dear, if you're not here with me
And when those blue snowflakes start falling
That's when those blue memories start calling
You'll be doin' all right, with your Christmas of white
But I'll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas
Christmas is just not the same if we lost a loved one this year, if we've moved and left friends, if we had an unexpected job change. There are lots of reasons for a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas.
Take time on this day to honor your sadness. Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year and only 2 days away, is a time to recognize there is darkness in our lives - even, maybe, especially - at Christmas. On December 22, the day after Solstice, the day will be one second longer. There will be one second more of daylight. We will begin the process once again of coming out of the darkness to find the light.
Come out to a place of quiet, of peacefulness and write or walk, cry and laugh, be honest about what's happening inside.
Ideas will be available, including journaling and creating collage cards, to help you feel the grief in a safe environment. Let this day help clear the way - at least a little - before the hustle and bustle of what is expected by others to be the happiest day of the year.
It's OK not to be in a "Christmas mood," whatever that's supposed to mean.
One often calms one's grief by recounting it.
- Pierre Corneille There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief - but the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.
- Hilary Stanton Zunin
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