I don’t know if I’m happy to say goodbye to 2025. One might think I’d be happily kicking it to the provable curb… I just don’t know.
In a year drenched in sadness and despair, guilt and fear, love and loss, joy and reconnection… there seems to be a compass spinning aimlessly while I search for direction. My true north is gone, but I remain grounded in the gentle tethers of my children, my family, my friends. Days of numbness dull my senses, fray my emotions, and elongate the seconds into endless spans of time.
Nothing can prepare you for the loss of your life partner. Of the looming loss of a grounding force with the passing your children’s father. There aren’t words to salve, or actions to soothe. It’s a singular journey in a troop of loved ones all navigating their own path of broken hearts and despair. With warm glows of golden sunsets, gusts of wind blowing through us, hearts in mysterious places, moments of rain, and silent signs his energy is still among us. In the moments of laughter quickly followed by the guilt of expectations. The swords edge slicing through a seemingly harmless moment in the middle of the day. The fear of moving forward and the dread of sinking into the moment.
It’s not the year that was unkind, it is the lived experience that taints the memories of 365 days passed. Months of wishing to cease the hands of time and grappling with the desire to turn the calendar back. Of 8 months of cold beds, empty hearts, and a deafening silence that created a sense of loneliness so deep it appears to be a black hole. But it was also one with smatterings of bright color, of moments of complete joy and love. Love as two became one. As travels launched peace. As friendship bonds strengthened. As family ties reinforced themselves with the bandages of comfort.
As I move into this next year of 365 days I strive to find prisms of joy, of love, of unity. Always with the spotlight of the stolen moments, the fond memories, and the lifetime created by two college kids who met in the basement of a frat party.
Keeping (in)Sanity 