January 2023 Newsletter | Feeling Sad at the Party: Experiencing Grief About Times of Transition

Posted December 27, 2022

Janus—our source for “January”—was the ancient Roman god of transitions. He was usually depicted with two heads facing in opposite directions, one forward, one backward. Although the change on the calendar from one year to the next is almost arbitrary, there being no real difference between December 31st and January 1st, at least not one visible in nature, as with any moment of change, the entry into the new year is a sort of balancing act: on the one hand we have all the anticipation of what is to come; on the other, we have our feelings about what is ending. 

We typically do not acknowledge that, as we slide from one year to the next, we are letting go of something. We tend to focus on the celebratory nature of the transition. We have parties, cities put on firework shows, there are often “best of” lists made as a way to summarize the year that is ending. We say, “Happy New Year”—the focus is on the new. But perhaps we are doing ourselves a disservice by not recognizing that there may be some mourning mixed into all of our merrymaking. So what if we did feel more sad than happy as the clock ticked past midnight on December 31st? 

Humans have a difficult time with grief (for a wonderful exploration of our difficulty with grief, listen to Anderson Cooper’s All There Is podcast). Loss is undeniably challenging because it does not involve choice. When we lose something we loved, when it is taken from us rather than freely given, we can feel less complete, there’s a hole left behind in the shape of that loss along with all of the things we left unsaid or undone. Or we may have said or done things we did not like and never set them right. This can be just as true as we lay rest to another year; there may be much in 2022 that we had hoped to do but never completed, or things we did but wish we had not. We also cannot forget that, with each passing year, we lose a bit of ourselves to time. As we move from one year to the next, we leave behind younger versions of ourselves. 

This is not to say that we advocate dwelling on the past. Far from it. Rather, we hope that those who are feeling uneasy about the start of a new year consider how properly grieving the end of the last year can allow for a happier transition. If you find yourself feeling overly negative about the year to come, therapeutic options such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Supportive Psychotherapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) provide skills and techniques for managing the difficulties of loss and change.