How to Be Thankful When You're Missing Someone at Thanksgiving

Small steps, soft moments, and a new way to approach the holidays after loss.

Finding small moments of gratitude in the middle of holiday grief.

Thanksgiving was always Alex’s favorite holiday. Even when he had to work, he’d sneak in a small sliver of time to stop by my aunt’s house, still in uniform, car running outside, and grab a plate of food and to say hello to those who greeted him. Those few minutes felt sacred, like a thread stitching him back into our day before he returned to the world that needed him. It’s one of those memories I can still feel in my heart, warm and familiar.

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How Can I Be Thankful? I’m Grieving.

Since he passed, so much has changed. Our gatherings shifted, families grew, and the places we celebrate look different now. Some years I’m at my boyfriend’s home, then with my parents. Thanksgiving became a patchwork version of what the holiday used to be.

But years ago, before I could breathe differently inside my grief, Thanksgiving felt like a storm rolling through my body. Not just because Alex wasn’t there, but because it was his holiday. A holiday he enjoyed so much. A holiday I had to face without him.

I remember that first Thanksgiving without him like it happened yesterday. It was less than eight weeks since he had died, and it was right on top of his first heavenly birthday. I was still living in that unreal fog, counting the days, counting the hours, trying to make it through moments that felt too big for even my soul. I kept sneaking away to the bathroom to cry, hiding from the soft eyes and gentle hands that said, “I know this hurts” and "we miss him too." Their compassion helped, but the pain was so unbelievably raw that it almost burned.

For a long time, I didn’t like holidays at all. I didn’t want to decorate. My birthday is on Christmas, and I refused to let my family sing to me for years. I would plaster on a smile, a braced, brittle smile, and make it look like I was okay. But inside, it was all shattered edges.

And now here I am, six years later. Six Thanksgiving holidays without my Alex. I still think about his uniformed figure stepping through the doorway, the quick hug, the warmth of knowing he carved out a little time for us. I still miss those traditions more than anyone could understand.

But I’ve also grown. My grief has softened in places and reshaped me in others. I’m in a different space now. I am now where gratitude doesn’t feel like betrayal. A space where both can exist: the missing and the meaningful.

I’m grateful for what life has brought me since losing Alex… my new partner, the friendships that found me when I needed them, my children’s health and their mending spirits, and my own healing that was quietly rooting itself long before I ever noticed. Back then, none of this mattered. I couldn’t feel any of it. But now? It matters deeply. And it matters more than I ever expected.

And if you’re reading this from the early months or first few years of your grief, hear me gently: I’m not here to tell you to “look on the bright side” or plainly state “just be thankful.”

Those words did nothing for me back then. They probably won’t help you either.

But here’s what I can offer…

Being thankful does not cancel out grief.

You can miss him so deeply your bones ache, yet still notice small slivers of goodness in your day.

Sometimes gratitude looks like:

• listening to his favorite song

• tasting the food he loved most

• watching the holiday movie he never missed

• sitting in a patch of warm sunlight

• holding a cup of coffee that steadies you

• wrapping yourself in that blanket you both fought over

• wearing his wooly hat on those crisp autumn nights

These are micro-moments.

Anchors. Tiny invitations back into your own life.

And if there is any gratitude you can reach for this season, maybe it’s gratitude for what still remains: the people who continue to show up, the traditions that still comfort you, the resilience you carry even though you never asked for it.

Sometimes gratitude is simply this: “I’m thankful I got to love someone like him.”

And if today you feel like there is absolutely nothing to be thankful for, well that’s okay, too. You’re not failing. You’re grieving. And that grief is proof of a love that doesn’t disappear.

Please remember that if the holidays feel heavy, you don’t have to walk through them alone.

My Reclaim Your Holidays grief workshop + workbook is designed to support widows through the emotional weight of the season.

Gentle tools.

Meaningful exercises.

Practical ways to create space for yourself without guilt.

Join the workshop here and give yourself the support you deserve.

Use code BF2025 to get an extra $10 off! (valid until 12/1/25)

I’d be honored to walk beside you.