...am asking for any general advice on how to approach certain unpleasant first anniversaries.
CW2017,
Any meaning that you attach to the anniversary of any given event is purely in your own mind. Why do you feel, or expect to feel, particularly sad on the day the particular event happened one year later?
Do you feel a deeper sense of sadness ten months and five days after the event? Probably not. Why? Because you're not thinking about and focusing on how sad it will be on that particular day. We're all condition to attach significance to things on an annual basis, but all it means is that our planet has gone around the sun one more time. Any significance of a past event on a given day is purely the result of our own cognitive processes.
In other words, stop ruminating the past and get on with life. You know the lyrics...
In every life we have some trouble But when you worry you make it double Don't worry, be happy Don't worry, be happy now
