Oh, what a year.

 Oh, what a year.

We just don't know what we don't know. And there was SO much we did not know last January! Many of us struggled to accept the knowing when it could no longer be refuted, and I feel this lag time has hurt so many of us. The realities of the pandemic, global warming, racism, Trumpism. 

I have been slow in the acceptance of all of this and so my one real hope for the new year and for the rest of my life is to shorten my time spent in resistance. I get easily rooted to my ideas and beliefs which certainly helps in guiding me, but it is also poses a challenge. Were I to just accept what is, I might find moving forward just a bit easier.

I don't know. It seems worth a shot.

But this does not mean there will not be pain. 

I think if there is one huge error in my thinking, it is that somehow I came to believe that acceptance means ease and that is not true. Most of us are not taught or shown how to live with pain, with discomfort, with the abject suckery that shows up just by route of being human. We eat and drink and run and scroll and create any number of things all in order to distract ourselves from getting down and dirty with how we feel.

But if there is one thing I have learned this year, it is simply not possible to run away from how I feel.

As a parent, there are eyes watching which makes this process even more complex. But I have learned to see it also provides me with an opportunity. Allowing myself to be seen in pain and allowing my kids sit with pain-- those are things not covered in the parenting books. It runs contrary to everything I lean towards as a mother. I want to pave the way, make life easier so they don't endure what I may have had to, shield them from my own concerns. 

But there are no shortcuts because to be fully human means experiencing pain.

I have watched each of my kids endure their own particular struggles this godawful year and learning to sit with that has been one of the toughest things ever. And they have watched me flounder, do what I can and also give up when I needed to. I don't know what it all means yet except to say we are doing it.

And so, here I am on the eve on New Years Eve thinking about acceptance and pain and forward motion and growth and how it's all wrapped up together in a messy package of being human. 

We are all so complex, so full of AND rather than either/or. If 2020 has taught me anything, it is two and three opposites can be true at once. I am grateful to know this, to call them out when I see them, and embrace the AND in me as well as those I love. I used to think when people veered from who I thought they were something was up or off. That can still be a bit true, but now I just consider things a bit more. I consider all I don't know and how we are all just showing just the bits we are willing. 

We don't know what we don't know, right?

We know there is pain AND we may not know the root cause. We know there is much to be grateful for AND still feel terribly sad.

We can be so happy to kick this year to the curb AND feel uncertain about the coming months.

I am worried about my kids AND I know they are learning about themselves.

I am weary from being at home and there is no place I'd rather be than with with my little pack that is my family.

I am tired and full of hope.

I am feeling the pain of 2020 and looking forward to my vaccination in 2021.

I long to hug my parents and I am so glad they are ok.

All of it is true.

Where ever you land in this moment is the right spot for you, ok?

Congratulations, dear humans. 

May you take time to celebrate what have endured AND allow  yourself to dream of brighter days.