Why Festivals Feel Heavy for Some People

Diwali, Christmas and the other big festivals are supposed to be the happiest time of the year. For many of us with neurodistinct, nonlinear, often misunderstood minds, they feel heavier than they feel pleasant.

There's the noise: crackers going off at unpredictable hours, music, doorbells, guests. There's the collapse of routine for days at a time. There are the unwritten social rules about who to visit, what to say, how long to stay and how happy to look. And underneath it all sits the expectation that we should be enjoying this. When we're not, the exhaustion arrives with a side of guilt.

For me, Diwali carries something more. It carries memory.

A month of cleaning, and a house full of tension

When I was a child, Diwali at our home began a month early. My maa would clean, scrub, sort and reorganise every corner of the house. It was our yearly reset. We had no help and no money to hire any, and not many resources either. So maa did everything on her own.

In that exhaustion, she often snapped at my brother and me. The air in the house felt tense. Looking back, I think she was under enormous pressure to perform, as if she were chasing the title of best homemaker and someone would one day hand her an award. When her effort wasn't appreciated, she was deeply hurt.

My father was usually away for work. He came home a day or two before Diwali, by which time maa had finished all the cleaning and decorating herself.

Understanding them as an adult

I own a home now. I clean it every Diwali too, but without that pressure. And as I do the chores, I keep wondering how my mother managed all of it alone.

Sometimes, in these days, I can almost hear her crying, even though she never cried in front of me. The sadness and exhaustion of those years seem to visit me again. For a mind that remembers in feelings and sensations rather than in neat timelines, a season can bring an entire childhood back at once.

I understand my father differently now as well. He was a good, honest man who worked constantly so that we had a home, nutritious food and the best education he could give us. He never spent money on himself and handed his whole salary to maa. He had a tough life. Like many Indian men of his generation, he wasn't good at expressing emotion. My mother longed for love and companionship; my father showed his love by providing. By the time he retired and was finally home, the four of us had grown into four separate individuals.

As a child, I simply missed him. As an adult, I can hold both truths: he was absent, and he was giving everything he had.

Doing it differently

Some things I've consciously chosen to do differently. I cut corners. I have help for daily mopping, cleaning and cooking. This year I booked a cleaning company that cleaned the entire house in one day, work that took my mother a month.

I also give things away: old clothes, bedsheets, utensils, anything I no longer use. My parents never did that. They saved even plastic bags inside one big plastic bag, because someday they might be useful. In its way it was a sustainable life, shaped by scarcity. But holding on to so much makes me feel heavy, and I'm grateful that my husband and I are aligned on this.

I often feel sad that my parents never had enough resources. I wish they were alive so we could give them a comfortable life. And then I wonder honestly whether they would even have accepted it, or whether hiring help and spending money would have created a whole new kind of chaos. I'll never know. That uncertainty is part of the ache.

What I'm keeping

There is one thing I want to carry forward from my mother: her devotion and her enthusiasm. However tired she was, she smiled at me during the Diwali pooja. She cooked the most wonderful snacks and sweets to offer Goddess Laxmi, and we relished them for weeks afterward. I still remember that taste, and the smell that filled our house. After the pooja, we would go out together to see the lights and decorations.

My life now is beautiful. Still, some days I wish I could go back to being ten years old, just me, maa and bhaiya. The three of us were so happy and so safe.

Why a festival can feel so heavy

A festival is not just a date on the calendar. For a sensitive nervous system, it is a cluster of cues: the smell of cleaning, the sound of crackers, the glow of diyas, the rhythm of a pooja. Each cue can call up the body state that once went with it.

That is why the unsettled feeling often arrives before any clear thought does. My body still remembers the hurry and the tiredness in the air of those weeks, even though my life today is calm. Nonlinear minds often remember this way: not as a neat story told in order, but as whole seasons returning at once.

Sometimes what we call festival stress is also grief that hasn't been named yet. If that sounds familiar, I've written more about it in Grief Has Many Layers.

Grief doesn't take a holiday

I miss her so much. Diwali is difficult without her.

My brother grieves her in his own way. I'm someone who talks about feelings; he isn't. So I don't bring these nostalgic conversations to him. I don't want to hand him my emotional charge just so that I feel less alone. That means I carry much of this by myself, and I needed somewhere to put it.

So I wrote to her.

A thought on growing up

Every parent, however hard they try, ends up leaving some emotional marks on their children. I believe it is the work of the grown child to look back and recognise that their parents did the best they could with the understanding they had at the time, and then to choose who they want to be and what they want to keep. To me, that is the real meaning of adulting.

This is not about excusing what hurt. It is about seeing our parents clearly, without blame and without pretending. I explore this further in Healing Without Blaming Your Parents for Everything.

If festivals feel heavy for you too, whether because of sensory overload, broken routines, old family tension or someone you miss, you're not doing it wrong. You're allowed to keep the parts that hold light and gently set down the rest. You're allowed to light a diya and feel sad at the same time.

If this stirred something in you, try writing a letter of your own: to a parent, a grandparent, or the child you once were. You don't have to send it or share it. Here is mine.

An open letter to my maa