Quiet No More

Crafting New Traditions from Old Memories

• Carmen Cauthen

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What happens when holiday traditions collide with the raw emotions of grief and loss? Join me, Carmen Cauthen, as I unravel this complex question through an emotional journey of memory and legacy. After the passing of my parents, the holidays took on a new shape, presenting challenges and opportunities for growth. Together, we'll explore how cherished holiday ornaments become more than just decorations but powerful emblems of family history. Grant yourself the freedom to reshape traditions to align with your current emotional landscape, ensuring they honor the past while providing comfort and connection in the present.

Family traditions aren't just for the holidays—they're the threads that weave through our lives all year long. Let me take you through treasured moments of my family's history, like our annual 4th of July cookouts and the simple delight of making homemade ice cream. These seemingly ordinary activities play an extraordinary role in shaping our family bonds, becoming memories that echo through generations. 

As you listen, I hope you'll feel inspired to share and preserve your own traditions, recognizing their vital role in fostering a sense of belonging and continuity within your family heritage.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More, hi. I want to talk about memories, and holiday memories in particular, because we've just gotten through the holidays. I wonder what the holidays are like for you. What do they bring up, what do they say to you? So I have all kinds of memories around holidays and and holidays have always been good for me, but I know that for some people they can be difficult.

Speaker 1:

I will say that the first year after my mother and my father, each year, after each one of them passed, the holidays were different. We tried to do the same things. We tried to do the same things. We tried to keep the same traditions going, and it wasn't just the Christmas holiday for us, it was every holiday. For that first year, everything was different. Mother's Day was different, father's Day was different, easter, valentine's Day, even things like Halloween. You know we had traditions that we had based around holidays, because that's what we do, but when somebody's missing, who's been part of the holiday for a long time, it changes how you do the holiday for a long time. It changes how you do the holiday.

Speaker 1:

So in my family when we were growing up Thanksgiving when we were growing up, we would go to my paternal uncle's house and have dinner with his family and then, as other family members moved into the same town we were in, we would go to a different aunt's house a maternal aunt's house and have our holiday, our Thanksgiving meal. And the first year after someone passed, it was just different. It was just different At Christmas. Christmas Eve we would have after we had grown up, because when we were little we would get in the back of the. My mother decided that she would start hosting Christmas Eve dinner with both sides of the family at our house and we would exchange gifts. Well, the year after she died and she died right before Thanksgiving she had already planned for the family to take a trip. So we took that trip and we tried to recreate that Christmas Eve dinner at an assisted living facility, and it was hard. We didn't have a tree, so we took the tree that was in the hallway. It wasn't the same way. We fixed food, nothing was the same, and all I could think after that was over was I'm not doing that again.

Speaker 1:

So it became a decision to make to either suffer through that time or to make it different. And it's okay to make it different when you're grieving. It's okay to make it different If you just want to change your tradition and change something up. My children still are not about to. Let me change the food at Thanksgiving. It still has to be the same menu. Don't be trying any new recipes when it's a holiday, but sometimes, for our own peace, we need to change some of the traditions that we've had because they don't work without certain people there, and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

You need to give yourself permission as part of your grieving. You need to give yourself permission, as part of your growing, to do some things differently, and it is a permission thing. You don't have to do things the same way all the time, but you do have to give yourself acknowledgement that you're making a change. Otherwise, it begins to feel like you've messed something up, but you haven't. You just made a change.

Speaker 1:

One of the other things that we do during our holidays is, especially during the Christmas holidays. One of the things I love to do is to put up my tree, and I have collected ornaments forever, and so the ornaments that are on my tree are ornaments. Some of them are my maternal grandmother's ornaments glass ornaments that are hand-painted that she had. Some of them are ornaments that I made as a child. Some of them are ornaments that we had on our trees when I was growing up. Those things are important to me because they are a reminder that bind me to my legacy and to my ancestors. But I also have collections of other ornaments. When I worked at the legislature, the Museum of History had ornaments made every year, and so I have a collection of ornaments that tell me things about the state of North Carolina, and when my younger cousins were students in Virginia, they would sell White House historical ornaments. So I have a collection of those. I can almost tell you where every ornament came from or the story behind it, and that continues to bind me to other things. I still collect hallmark ornaments every year, and I know these ornaments can increase in value.

Speaker 1:

So while I'm collecting and looking at things that I like, I'm also planning to leave those things to my children, so it's legacy building for them as well. So it's legacy building for them as well, and I don't like to travel somewhere and not get an ornament to remind me of where I've been. So this year we went to. This past year we went to Disney World in Florida and it was something that my oldest child wanted to do for her birthday. So for Christmas I was shopping and saw that Lennox had ornaments that were Cinderella's castle and they were beautiful. So I got one for each of my girls to remind them of the experience that we had had, because that's what it is all about it's memories and legacy and experience. And so what are you doing to remind yourself and your family members of the experiences that you have had, and how do you fit that into your holiday traditions?

Speaker 1:

And this is not just something for the holidays that we celebrate at the end of the year. We celebrate all kinds of holidays, and so even things like 4th of July, celebrating Independence Day, one of the things that my family used to do was have a cookout. The things that my family used to do was have a cookout. My mom would invite family members over. We would go out back on the porch or in the stoop actually it wasn't really a porch and we would crank and make homemade ice cream.

Speaker 1:

I remember the recipes for the ice cream and how we would have to make the custard the day before and put it in the refrigerator to chill, and we were so excited when we finally got an electric ice cream maker so we didn't have to try to hand crank the ice cream. We would do it, but then we would get so tired because our arms would just hurt and so Daddy would have to come and finish cranking the ice cream. But those were things that were special memories and those are the kinds of things that we hand down to our children, and sometimes we don't even realize that we're handing down memories of things that we did. It's just what we do. So I want you to think about that and I want you to start sharing that if you haven't been sharing those things with your family, because it's important to be quiet, no more when we talk about family history, memories and holidays, history, memories and holidays. You've been listening to Quiet no More where I share my journey, so you can be quiet.