Journal Date: January 2, 2020
COVID is still very much a problem right now. It looks like we’re just past the peak of the most recent surge, and the two vaccines have been approved and are on their way, but it will likely be many months before anything begins to approach any kind of “normal.”
I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it took all of 2021 for this to run its course.
But I’m not in a rush to return to “normalcy.”
Of course, I’m concerned for my health and that of everyone else, but I’m far from eager to return to what once was.
There’s a part of me that’s afraid for what will happen when this ends–I almost don’t even want it to.
There has been so much growth for me this year, and I don’t ever want to go back to the way things used to be for me.
But just because things will reopen, and I can go back to my same old patterns or lifestyle doesn’t mean that I should.
I can just decide for myself that I want to live a different kind of life from now on.
These have been difficult times, but I can take what I have learned from the depths, and return to carry this wisdom in my life from now on.
I really believe that things are going to be different from this moment forward.
Just in the past year– it’s incredible how much I’ve changed.
I’m so proud of myself.
I don’t say that enough. I should. I’ve worked so hard for this.
The past year is just the culmination, it’s the work of many, many years coming to fruition.
This is the year healing happened.
There’s no going back – never – to the way things were before.
So many things came together this year to make it happen.
It was years and years of difficult work, but there’s also an element of it that I can’t explain – that I believe is only attributable to something higher than myself.
We can call it grace.
I’m thankful for that, too.
These two things, persistence and grace, have made all the difference for me.
Other things that made the difference last year: Beso, my little doggie love; a regular meditation practice; my therapist; and Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts and all the beautiful women I met there.
Finally, I can thank an unflinching willingness to face my pain (and to do my best to hold it with as much compassion as possible).
This was it – this year was the turning point that made all possible.