Hopefully everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
I thought I would do a brief post today since you might still be sluggish from too much tryptophan.
New Traditions
Starting new traditions at Christmas is a perfectly natural and acceptable thing to do in establishing a “new normal” for your life once widowed.
New traditions can make you feel as though you are taking a tiny step forward in your grief journey. Each step forward is progress and prevents you from getting stuck in grief. A new tradition does not have to be something big like switching who hosts your family Christmas dinner. It can be something small, like my new tradition.
My New Tradition
I love looking through new cookbooks and trying new recipes. While I am not back to cooking or baking like I did when Joe was alive, each year I find myself working on my culinary skills a little bit more. After all I may end up getting married again and need to cook for family gatherings.
A year or two ago, I fell in love with the “Gooseberry Patch” family of cookbooks and earlier this year received a copy of “A Hometown Christmas” , which contains favorite holiday recipes submitted by their readers.
So this week, I will finally be making a couple recipes to share this coming weekend. (Yes, I am a little behind schedule) I highly recommend you get a copy and check out the recipe for “Old Country Cake” on page 152. You never will guess who submitted that recipe.
Now off to make “Italian Chicken Spread”, or maybe “Snowball Cake” or “Italian Fish Skillet” or…
Grieving?
Don’t be afraid to try a new tradition this year. You just might like it. Even if you are not grieving, try a new tradition to shake things up a bit.
(P.S. Thank you JoAnn & Vickie for choosing my recipe.)
(Coming later this week, “Finding Hope Through Actions”)
JoyReturns 