It’s been a long year of the i-o-n words: isolation, insulation, suffocation, observation, integration, communication, hibernation, activation, obscuration—an extensive list beyond those listed. We endured fits and spurts of hiding and going out, gearing up and winding down, screen time rejecting nature time and crowded zoom theaters ousting our living room guests.
2020 delivered a year where our values shaped our beliefs, our beliefs shaped our experiences and our experiences shaped our desires. Joy and pain tap danced around doubt and power. Fear and regret relentlessly stalked us. Occasionally, hope resourced enough relief to help us reunite with peace. Occasionally.
Our resiliency and skill at moving from pain to power to peace was definitely put to test. Much of what we once took for granted, the people, foundations and systems that supported our daily routines, vanished. Our unsurmountable willpower, pounded by social, economic, health and political upheaval, required tenacious care-taking. While our relationships shifted and we became adrift in our own or others’ sorrow and loss, fatigue moved in claiming occupancy in our over-crowded heart boxes.
As we bring closure to the ‘thank-God-it’s-over’ year, we anxiously await a renewed start. Soldiering in the brigades of broken hearts, empty stomachs, racial injustices, front line sacrifices and altered relationships, we survey the soul’s somber landscape. We gift ourselves with the promise to find help to heal our residual scarred imprints and seek solace from those who can help us forget, forgive or find some semblance of the familiar.
Vowing not to hit the rewind button, we finish the heavy lifting left behind from the i-o-n words. We reflect on the high points gratitude graced us with, honoring those gifts as reverent place markers to find our way back home. We push aside regrets and allow sanguine choices to be our new sacred companion. As we upwind ourselves, leveraging optimism as the ultimate turnkey, we seize a restart with greater joy.
And, by damn, 2021 will give us reason to rejoice! ALLways.
enJOY, Mary
Contemplate:
Create a New Script for 2021 — Move from Regret to Rejoice!
What are two things I can do to:
- Manage my expectations
- Leverage what I’ve learned
- Rediscover my artisanal gifts
- Create new stories of expansion
- Embrace optimism
