Can we celebrate the new year?
It’s astonishing to look back on this year; three-fourths of it was spent in isolation, in fear, wrought with anxiety and loss, watching the daily numbers and the election polls. 2020 was full of numbers. It was long and lonely, but it was also profoundly revelatory. This year forced us to step back and look with a new perspective on our lives and our relationships. I woke up with this question in my heart as we approach the new year because I often reflect and note what will come; Can we even celebrate this year?
Ask me on a bad day, and my answer is no, but this morning as I sit with a warm cup of peppermint coffee, the twilight of dawn dissolving into the warmth of morning, I feel energized with new possibilities. I have hope, and I see the light on that horizon. I plan to honor every struggle and every challenge I turned into growth.
The pandemic was an earthquake to the foundations upon which we stood. It rocked us to the core and shook so hard that cracks emerged in every aspect of our lives, sometimes slowly and at times in crescendo, breaking open and exposing that deep darkness below. We pieced ourselves back together daily, as much as we could. For me, when I step back and observe like we were forced to do from the safety of our homes, I can see those cracks, spanning out like a web around me. I see my life in a different light. I see the people I love differently; I see myself differently. Looking from where I am now, I see where I need to build stronger bridges, and I can see the old cracks that existed all along. I know now what is important to me. I bet I’m not alone in this. We share this collective pain, and if we’re paying attention, we probably realized that we are alive in ways we wouldn’t have noticed before this year. The cracks expose what’s underneath, where the work needs to be done. I realized the depths of myself this year, and I have challenged others to do the same. Without the facade of the daily grind, we are forced to sit with ourselves, sit with others in their pain, and listen more instead of firing off a response and moving on.
The year was challenging for me because of an unexpected auto-immune diagnosis, a mental health crisis in my family, depression, and anxiety that naturally came with the pandemic. Then there was the pandemic fatigue and guilt for not being there for others, missing family, and navigating my small event-based business through an avalanche of cancellations and loss of income. The basement flood, power-outages, tornado warnings, and the cat-hospital stay made things a bit more stressful. Still, for hundreds of thousands of others, this year was immeasurably painful and life-changing because of illness and death.
I count my blessings, and I am thankful for how this year challenged me to make life meaningful in new and creative ways. I don’t ever want to forget dressing up, playing restaurant in my kitchen, and dancing to our wedding song with my husband; our daily walks in the park, or the amount of cat snuggles one can be a part of in nine months with no separation. For all the difficult and challenging situations I endured, there are at least two happier counterparts to make up for it. And I’ll take what I learned into every year after this that I am lucky enough to survive on this earth.
Celebrating the new year isn’t the mark to the end of the pandemic or the end of all the other shit that 2020 brought us, but it is the turning of a page. It’s an opportunity to shift, to grow, to see anew. So, can we have a moment of revelry for all that we’ve sacrificed, endured, and all that we’ve learned about how to really live in 2020? I sure as hell will. I know that ringing in a new year doesn’t mark the end of what was, but it does mean we made it through. Keep going.
