The Most Beautiful Christmas Gift for Someone Who Lost a Loved One

It can be hard to decide on a Christmas gift for someone who lost a loved one.

No matter what you pick, please know how amazing it is that you are thinking of a Christmas gift for someone who is grieving. It is too often that we don’t know what to say to someone who is grieving, so we do not say anything at all. Or some time has passed, so we think that it would be weird to bring up their grief.

Let me be the first to say that someone who is grieving will never forget the gift you bought them, and the thought and intentionality behind it.

Full disclosure: This product was sent to me without charge in exchange for a review. After receiving the product, I 100% believe that I would promote this product no matter what- it is amazing and beautiful, and so needed by many. 

The most beautiful Christmas gift for someone who lost a loved one

I met Kalina in a Facebook group when she was explaining her product to someone. And I stopped where I was and started tearing up.

I lost my Dad on January 16, 2021, but even now it doesn’t seem real. Typing out the date of my dad’s death seems foreign still, because grief has a weird way of feeling like it happened years ago, yesterday, and never all in the same moment.

I still go to call him. I still get moments of guilt for not visiting him until I remember. And it was almost two years ago.

Losing my parent in January meant that it would be a long time until I had my first Christmas without him. I still wasn’t okay; grief still hadn’t set in yet.

This Advent gift box means more to me than Kalina will ever know, and I cannot wait to explain it to you all.

My Story Of Grief and The Liel Box

He was 74 when he left this earth. 

He wasn’t old enough for people to assume he died from old age. He wasn’t young enough for it to be a tragic story of someone who died too young. He lived a good life and it was time for him to go.

But his death left me unable to classify the type of grief I was feeling. It wasn’t a cookie-cutter type of explanation of someone dying. Instead, it was one that felt like it needed a backstory for it to make any sense.

For several months, I watched my dad slowly decline. We really thought we were losing him. There was a feeling, whether conscious or subconscious, that he was transitioning to heaven soon. 

He was hospitalized for a week in the midst of all of this. People started praying, and by the glory of God, he got miraculously better. He started looking, feeling, and sounding the best he had sounded in years. 

Three weeks later, he died from something completely unrelated.

I didn’t lose a dad to cancer. I didn’t lose him to a heart attack, or a stroke. It wasn’t an expected death, but it wasn’t quite unexpected either.

Sometimes, grief is really hard to explain.

Me and my Dad- 2012. I would have taken a lot more pictures together if I had known.

We have all experienced this type of grief in our life. Some type of grief that is unable to easily be put into words due to the nature of the death, or our connection with the person who passed.

Maybe you lost a coworker. Or perhaps an old boss of yours passed away. Or maybe you found out through Facebook that the mean girl from your high school had a tragic death and you feel weird for having so much heartache about it.

Or you could be experiencing the most peculiar type of grief: Maybe God gave you an empathetic heart, and you are heartbroken over a friend losing someone you don’t even know. You’ve never met the person, but you read their story, and the pain is enough to make you want to take the entire day off.

It’s okay if your grieving heart doesn’t fit into a stereotypical grief box. Grief is grief, and if you are experiencing heartache over anything it is valid.

God calls us to love our neighbors as ourselves. But no love story comes without heartache. When we love, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to hurt and grief. 

Our God never promised us a life without hurt. In fact, he said the opposite. John 16:33 says, “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

I feel guilty about what I grieve sometimes. But my friend who lost her daughter at a young age texted me this one day:

“Remember, your heart may not be broken because of losing a child, but God hears your pain just the same.  Losing a child is my struggle, you have yours.  Neither is worse.  God hears all of our crying hearts.”

Yes, he does. Grief is grief no matter what we are grieving. And God heard us just the same.

The Liel Grief Box- What It Includes

I am so thankful for those who gave me small gifts when my dad passed away. I remember each and every single one. But now that it’s my second Christmas without my Dad, I am beyond grateful for the Advent Grief Box.

What the box includes: 

• 5 devotionals (one for each week of Advent and one for Christmas Day)
• An Advent candle to light each time
• A wrapped activity for each week
• All match the theme of the Advent candles (hope, peace, love, and joy)

As it is explained in their Etsy shop:

“These devotionals do not attempt to explain away grief, instead they invite grieving individuals to invite God to the center of their grief, and to know that they are loved by God, despite their pain. ”

The gift for each week includes any materials needed to complete the activity. Everything you need is in the box!

How did the Liel Advent Grief Boxes Start?

The boxes were created from a personal tragedy- when the creator lost her mother just days after Christmas.

When I asked Kalina where the start of the boxes came from, she replied:

“I actually made this box out of an immense feeling of loneliness in my grief and how that loneliness compounded during Christmas. My birthday is Dec. 1st, then Christmas, then the anniversary of my mom’s death is the 29th. Every December, so many people give me gifts to try and make me feel physically comfortable, but grief is uncomfortable, and I needed a place to feel safe with that. So I just created what I wish I had; a safe place to grieve and bring my grief to God.”

Many feel pain during a time that others see as joyous. That is where the idea of the Advent Grief Boxes started.

More information on her story and how the boxes came to be are under the information in her Etsy shop.

How to Purchase

One of the best parts about this box- the payments can be split up- without touching your credit! I’m a huge fan of Klarna, an app that easily splits up payments. This box can be split up into payments, or paid at once through the Etsy shop.

You can also find more information on their Facebook or Instagram pages!

Final Thoughts

If you are on the hunt for a beautiful but meaningful Christmas gift for someone who lost a loved one, this is a gift that lasts well beyond five weeks. Not only can it walk someone through the season of Advent, but it also gives space for grief in a world where it sometimes feels like we are expected to bottle it down.

I cannot recommend this wonderful gift enough for either yourself or someone you know that is going to be struggling this holiday season. 

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