Grief Resolutions for the New Year Artwork

SOLACE: Soul + Grief

This podcast is sponsored by SOULPLUSGRACE serving the San José/Santa Cruz area, offering grief support and grief journeying with spirituality. I hope to help you travel through grief with God at your side.

"I am a trained Spiritual Director for those who seek to complete the 19th Annotation of St. Igantius’ spiritual exercises OR seek spiritual direction while grieving. I have also worked as a hospital/cemetery chaplain and grief doula. I believe all paths lead to God and that all traditions are due respect and honour. I take my sacred inspiration from all of my patients and companions–past, present and future; the Dalai Lama, James Tissot, St. John of the Cross, the Buddha, Saint Teresa of Ávila, and, of course, Íñigo who became known as St. Ignatius. I utilize art, poetry, music, aromatherapy, yoga, lectio divina, prayer and meditation in my self-work and work with others. I believe in creating a sacred space for listening; even in the most incongruous of surroundings."

BACKGROUND

Jesuit Retreat Center, Los Altos, CA -- Pierre Favre Program, 3 year training to give the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius
Centro de Espiritualidad de Loyola, Spain -- The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola -- 30 Day Silent Retreat
Center for Loss & Life Transition – Comprehensive Bereavement Skills Training (30 hrs) Ft. Collins, CO
California State University Institute for Palliative Care--Palliative Care Chaplaincy Specialty Cert. (90 hrs)
Sequoia Hospital, Redwood City, CA -- Clinical Pastoral Education
19th Annotation with Fumiaki Tosu, San Jose, CA, Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA M.A. – Pastoral Ministries

CONTACT ME: candeelucas@soulplusgrace.com with questions to be answered in future episodes.

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SOLACE: Soul + Grief

Grief Resolutions for the New Year

January 16, 2026 • Candee Lucas • Season 5 • Episode 3

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The calendar turns, but grief doesn’t follow dates. We open this new year by laying out seven honest, compassionate resolutions for anyone carrying loss—practices that respect your pace, honor your person, and rebuild daily life without pretending the hurt is gone. From the first minutes, we name a core truth: this is your grief and only you can know what helps.

Together we explore personal ritual as a lifeline—cooking a favorite meal, choosing a song, carving a quiet corner, or adopting visible symbols that speak without explanation. Beyond formal support, we talk about the humble power of community—book clubs, faith gatherings, bowling nights—to remind your nervous system what ordinary life feels like.

For those drawn to faith, we unpack spiritual direction as a gentle companion to therapy. You’ll hear how a director can help you notice where God feels near or far, how your spiritual life has shifted, and which practices might hold you now. We close with whole-self care you can actually keep: regular sleep, simple food, steady movement, and soothing hobbies that regulate the body and give sorrow room to move.

If you’ve been told to “move on,” consider this your permission to move with—at your pace, with your rituals, and with community beside you. If this resonated, follow the show, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so others can find these gentle tools too.

SPIRITUAL DIRECTION WHILE GRIEVING IS AVAILABLE

UPCOMING WORKSHOP ON SOULFUL LISTENING: https://events.scu.edu/markey-center/event/359741-soulful-listening-workshops-on-the-ministry-of

Art: https://www.etsy.com/shop/vasonaArts?ref=seller-platform-mcnav
and https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/candee-lucas

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F2SFH4Z6

Music and sound effects today by: via Pixabay

Candee: 0:52

Welcome to Solace: Soul+ Grief. I'm glad you're here. My name is Candee Lucas. I'm a grief chaplain, former hospital and cemetery chaplain, and spiritual director. This is our fifth season, and I'm glad you're with us. The loss of a loved one is such a severe, abrupt life change that we know grief can be an ongoing feature in our lives. And so we started this podcast to find out where God can be with us, God can assist us. You're always welcome in this circle of healing, love, and support.

Candee: 1:36

Happy New Year. I thought it might be a good time to review some of our grief practices and our grief concerns and make some resolutions for the new year to ease our path.

Candee: 1:55

Number one, this is your grief journey. This is your path. Only you can know what is meaningful and what is helpful, and what is healing and what is not. So make sure you listen to your heart and your soul and yourself. Respect the urges that come up in you, whether it be to cry, to rage, to cocoon, to sit by the window and stare into the rain. Whatever it is you need, only you know that.

Candee: 2:34

Number two resolution-- Take all the time you need. There has been some disagreement in the mental health community lately since they added complicated grief to the diagnostics. What many mental health professionals think about when they think about complicated grief is the time the person takes to grieve. A case can be made for the idea that we will grieve the rest of our lives. That person that we've lost, or those people that we've lost, or whatever the losses are in our life, whether it be friends or places, communities, memories, even, only we can say and we can know what time is appropriate. So we need to know what it means, and how time itself is maybe not a good measure of grief.

Candee: 3:46

Number three. Whether it be their favorite meal, their favorite song, their favorite place, devise something that gives the memory meaning and something that is meaningful to you. Create your own memorials, rituals, and remembrances. Victorian times had us all beat on respecting death and survivors. They made portraits, silhouettes, they made jewelry out of the deceased person's hair. They wore black for a year. The men wore black armbands or black ribbons in their top hats. And there were black wreaths on every door. Oftentimes curtains. Black satin was hung over draperies in the rooms. So I encourage you to look around. Maybe get a piece of black jewelry as a remembrance. Or wear your own black armband. I had a client once whose daughter had died around the holidays. And she dutifully put up her regular decorations, but felt it was so sad that to the neighborhood or people passing by, there was no indication of the great loss she had suffered. So someone suggested, and I don't remember who, that she paint her red holly wreath black. She thought that was a great idea, and so she sprayed the shiny red wreath with shiny black paint. It didn't require any explanation, but it was a signal to her and maybe to her neighbors and maybe to passers by that there had been a great loss this season.

Candee: 6:26

Number four. I visit a lot of groups that were not for me, which is one of the reasons Solace was born. I visited many grief groups along the years, both for personal purposes of grieving, assistance with grieving, and for educational purposes to find out what kind of groups were out there and how they were run. Some of them were very helpful, but very few.

Candee: 7:20

Number five. Stay in community. Whatever that might mean to you, whether it be your church or parish or bowling league, book club, whatever it might be, as much as it might feel awkward or strange, stay with people as much as you can. Even if you're not talking about your grief or sharing your grief stories or stories of your loved one, being out in community reminds you. It reminds you of life and the many colors and shapes and sizes of all people and how living in the world feels. Because sometimes I feel after a period of long grieving, we just don't know how to get back into what some people call the swing of things. But I think it's more varied than that. I think it's just getting back into the world, whatever that might mean. But mostly we know now from studies and long times of people with periods of isolation that just being with people has a healing effect. Remembering what regular life looks like has a healing effect. And participating in regular life has a healing effect.

Candee: 8:59

Number six, consider spiritual direction. If you need help finding a spiritual director and you are unable to do so through your church or parish, please feel free to contact me as I have a list available of spiritual directors. You can do this in person or by Zoom or sometimes a combination. But a spiritual director can help you find the places in your life where God appears, where God is calling to you, where things have shifted in your spiritual life since the loss of your loved one. It's not like therapy, and you may need a therapist too from time to time. Or ongoing. You should treat this as a huge life event which throws all kinds of changes at you that you may or may not be ready for. We all have a certain resilience, but sometimes grieving runs right up against it. If you think spiritual direction would help, by all means consider it. Number seven, take good care of yourself. This means physically, mentally, spiritually, in all ways. This is the one that overwhelms people. Because people do say that a little like an offshoot of how are you? I'm fine. Only you know what taking care of yourself means, whether it be an afternoon at a matinee, a walk in the garden, spending time with your favorite pet, spending time with friends at lunch, or just spending time alone, doing a hobby, writing in a journal, doing art or knitting, or any kind of activity that soothes you. That's the key. Try to get enough sleep and especially try to keep a regular sleep schedule. Try to eat healthy. Something especially when we're feeling down can be difficult to do. Ere on the side of less, not more. Which includes alcohol and recreational drugs.

Candee: 11:58

That concludes another episode. A new one drops every Friday morning. I'm Candee Lucas, your host. You can reach me through the email in my show notes. Remember, be gentle to yourself and peaceful with others. Travel always with God at your side. Vaya con Dios.