Worry Less This Holiday Season
Download your free grief-sensitive guide to gently plan for care, connection, and meaning grounded in love. You’ll also receive gentle email coaching to support you through the season.
Permission to Protect Your Grieving Heart This Season
The holidays can feel overwhelming after a loss - not just emotionally, but logistically too.
What should you say yes to? What do you need to let go of? How can you honor your loved one in a way that feels meaningful, not performative?
This free grief-sensitive holiday planner is a gentle space to:
- Reflect on what you need without guilt
- Set emotional boundaries
- Choose traditions that still feel right
- Create rituals that honor your love and your healing
It’s not about doing more. It’s about feeling more prepared, supported, and grounded so you can move through the season with greater peace of mind.
What’s Inside the Grief-Sensitive Holiday Planner
This printable planner gives you simple, supportive pages to help you care for your heart and make clear, thoughtful choices during the holiday season.
Inside, you’ll find:
- A coping skills checklist to help you respond to overwhelm
- A support map to plan moments of connection with people who care
- Self-care tracking to remind you to pause and recharge
- A space to review holiday invitations and say yes or no with intention
- Reflection prompts to help you keep, change, or release traditions
- A gentle guide to create a new ritual that honors your loved one
About Heather Stang
Hi, I’m Heather Stang. I’m a thanatologist, author, and creator of the Mindfulness & Grief System. But long before any of that, I was a grieving child.
Over 40 years ago, my uncle died by suicide just before Thanksgiving. I was seven. My grandmother, who was the church secretary and the heart of every holiday meal, still cooked our traditional southern feast. There were oven-fried quail, corn pudding, squash casserole, and all the vegetables from the garden. But the joy was missing.
No one talked about what had happened. Most of the adults pretended everything was fine. It felt like my mom and I were the only ones who knew it wasn’t.
Looking back, I wish we had made space to honor him. We could have lit a candle, shared a memory, or left a seat open at the table. But we didn’t. That wasn’t allowed.
My grandmother coped by staying busy and holding tightly to denial. For the rest of her life, she never acknowledged the truth of how he died. That first Thanksgiving left a lasting mark on me.
This planner was created for anyone who knows how painful it can be to pretend. It offers a gentle way to reflect, set boundaries, and remember your loved one with intention. You don’t need to perform or push through. You can choose what feels right and care for your heart in the process.
Grief during the holidays can feel especially heavy. The memories, the reminders, the pressure to smile and show up. It all adds up.
In over 20 years of working with grieving individuals and families, I’ve found that it’s often not the holiday itself that causes the most pain. It’s the anticipation. The quiet dread that builds up before the invitations, the traditions, and the questions you don’t know how to answer.
You might be worrying about keeping it together in front of others. Or how to say no without hurting anyone’s feelings. Maybe you’re not sure how to include your loved one in the day, or you just want to stay in bed and hide from it all.
That’s exactly why this planner exists. It gives you space to think it through, set boundaries, and choose what matters most, before the pressure sets in.
You don’t have to figure it all out. You just need a place to begin, gently and with intention.