Which candle are you?

It's okay if you're both

There are two kinds of grief: the kind that happens to one of us and the kind that happens to all of us at once. I’m intimate with the former, as most of us are. And these days, none of us can escape the latter. This collective grief is what happens when someone well-known dies or a mass shooting takes place or a tragedy affects you and your neighbor and the guy down the street and maybe even someone across the country. When we suddenly find ourselves starting every conversation with, “I can’t believe it,” and the person on the other end of the call knows exactly what we’re referring to.

This week has been a doozy on both fronts – the personal and the collective.

For starters, chanukah began on Sunday. And though it’s in many ways my favorite holiday, with its eight nights of latkes, beautiful candlelight, and presents, too, it’s also the one that makes me miss my family more than most holidays do. Chanukah was always a big deal at my house. We didn’t light just one chanukiah, we lit a dozen. We didn’t sing just the classic prayers; my mother made custom holiday songbooks so we could sing along while she played the piano. “This Little Light of Mine” was essentially her theme song. When we grew up, our annual chanukah party moved to my sister Rachel’s home, multiplying tenfold in size. The last happy evening I spent with her was at one of those parties, just two months before she died.

Now, each chanukiah my small, beautiful family lights comes with its own story. This is the one Rachel bought in Italy. This is the one my father put on the cover of Moment magazine back when he was the editor. This is the one that Dalia got as a gift for her bat mitzvah. I still love the holiday, but now its beauty comes along with a hefty dose of melancholy and saudade.

I was braced for the complicated feelings of chanukah, but I wasn’t expecting those feelings to collide with so much collective grief. I started the weekend by learning about the death of a beautiful little girl in the rare disease community – a loss felt by all of us who know what it means to raise a dying child. Then there was the mass murder at Bondi Beach and the shooting and lockdown at Brown University, dual tragedies that struck close to home – one literally and one figuratively.

And now we collectively mourn one of the greatest creative minds of our time. From the iconic Meathead to When Harry Met Sally to The Sure Thing and Stand by Me (and so, so many more masterpieces), it feels like Rob Reiner has kept me entertained for almost my entire life. Learning about his and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner’s, murders on Monday morning was gut wrenching. The fact that the President of the United States responded to Mr. Reiner’s murder in such a despicable way shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. (And as an aside, I wish people would stop referring to a celebrity’s child as their “adopted child.” Really? I don’t see us qualifying the rest of their offspring as the “biological child,” or “the egg-donor child.”)

So what are we to do with all this personal and collective grief? How can we show up for each other when we’re all hurting?

I think we need to take our cue from the chanukah candles themselves.

A chanukiah has room for a candle for each of the eight nights of the holiday. We light one candle on the first night, two on the second, three on the third, and so on. But there’s an additional candle, too, called the shamash (helper). The shamash is actually the only candle we light with a match. We then use that candle to light all the others.

It strikes me that sometimes we’re the shamash, sharing our light with those who need it. That shamash is incredibly powerful, able to light countless candles from its single flame. But sometimes we’re the other candles, the ones sitting quietly waiting for the helper to light us up. And that’s okay, too. After all, without the rest of the candles, the shamash would be out of a job. Most of us are constantly shifting between these roles, sometimes even within a single day. There’s power in both, knowing when to shine your light and when to rest and let someone else be your helper.

So wherever you are today, whether you have the energy to lift others or could use some support yourself, I hope you’re able to find some light in all this darkness.

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If where you are is wondering how to show up for your grieving friend during the holidays, check out my latest in Psychology Today.

Thank you for being part of this community. I’m so glad you’re here.

With grit and grace,

Jessie

P.S., Breath Taking is on a big holiday sale right now on Amazon. Pair it with a cozy throw and a vat of hot chocolate or a bottle of wine, and you’ve got the perfect holiday gift for yourself or someone on your list.