#58 The year is done

and another one begins - 2nd edition

What a year!!! It was partly wackadoodle town but also not(?) in so many ways. Sofia recently asked me what my word for the new year would be (we discussed a new era, as you do with birthdays, and I needed help brainstorming) - and although I traditionally would sit and think about these things by January, maybe marking the year with a December birthday is kismet.

Kismet is a great word. I like that it's a bit whimsical and uncommon to use. I think the year that's passed was the kind of year when everything happens all at once, whereas the year before, it felt like nothing was happening. For a long time, I've been waiting to see where the gift of 2023 was. I've been known to refer to it as the worst year of my life. I suppose the gift — now that 2024 is ending — is that I made do with the deals I was cut, the cards I was dealt, during a year where many moving pieces finally whirred to life, after what felt like ages of stagnation.

I think 2023 was a strange test of endurance and it showed me where my weaknesses lie. Weaknesses are not bad. They're not meant to be made fun of or minimized. They're just softer spots that need more love. More attention. (Love is paying attention). I learned that I tend to swell up inside myself and outside of myself when I feel unsafe. I disconnect from my body when I feel I am in danger. I turn to food for comfort and I quickly envelop myself in a coccoon, I tend to close down and retreat into silence. I learned silence can be a weapon you use against yourself too. When you choose not to talk about how you feel or about the truth of something – how something is wearing you out or exhausting you, or how it is making you feel defeated – it cannot make the feeling of defeat smaller or disappear just because you're not talking about it.

In a way, 2024 being the year of the dragon did resonate with me (doesn't it always make sense for a reason?) i spent time at home, the most consecutive weeks I’d ever been there since moving away nine years prior. I also came home to my body – my physical body, becoming aware of it, its planes and curves, the way it swelled up with sadness and silence for months before I decided to make incisions that would alter it forever, from the inside to the outside.

The perspective of it changes, but the one I settle for is that it was the way I chose to reclaim my body from a foreign land and into my home again. I became who I always was. I was gifted a blank slate, a way to start over. I was given the opportunity to recognize the ways I was numbing myself and to choose whether to confront it or to submit it to silence. I still think about how these stories are carried down through generations and how I happened to come from people who turned to food as a bid for control, for reassurance, for comfort. I think it's a story I will be rewriting for years to come. And I am actually okay with that! That is probably the next gift.

The grief I felt in 2023 was a preamble to everything I would feel in the year following; a complete loss of control and a complete loss of reality as I knew it. I was untethered to everything except my house in Amsterdam, which was also tumultuous, so by every account, it was Not a Good Year. I found it very humbling. I find a little bit of shame there sometimes for "allowing" myself to neglect my physical body that year. And then just as soon, I remember that I was doing what I could to survive; that we turn to what we know to guarantee we will make it through; that we cope with reality when it is unbearable in many different ways; some of them more visible than others. I learned that in an Especially Bad Year, self-compassion is the better choice if you want to give yourself any grace at all. If you want to have a good chance at forgiving yourself and letting go of it, then self-compassion is the best way to get through it.

In 2024 everything sped up by the time I had surrendered into having a Hard Time. Something about hard times I’ve learned is that leaning into them doesn't mean I've given up and this will be the rest of my life (it never is). It means I gave myself permission to accept things were shitty. There is some sort of peace to be found in laying on the floor of your bedroom, accepting that life simply is pummeling through you at 240 mph with a shit storm and it's easier to take it than it is to strain every muscle in your body, hoping you will trasverse it. In reality, it's a storm - there's no way to walk through a storm. You'll exhaust yourself. The best you can do is pack for the weather and accept the skies are on fire and try again when the storm is over.

And when I did, the most miraculous thing happened: the storm passed. I sublet my room within a couple of days and I found a good ticket home within the same time span. It all flowed so easily. The friction that filled the air around me, the echoes of slamming doors in my career, the stagnancy of a day in and day out, aimless period of my life became something other. It was as if accepting I was stuck was the first part to getting unstuck. As if acknowledging my reality allowed me to make it into something different, something new.

I went home in April and May and I made incisions to my body I also realized that the home I grew up in deserved a bigger space in my life; if anything to learn more about the generations before me, who they were, what they did, what they loved, who they became. It was a very insightful time. I asked a lot of questions. I received many answers. I learned that women have played a big part in my lineage, much more so than men, that their choices and sacrifices are what shaped our family. That their endurance was revered and their positions were respected. It showed me how the parts of me that are strongwilled and fiercely loyal and stubborn are one and the same parts of the women before me, passed on to guarantee that I would survive. That I would live.

Then June came and with it, I had found things to take up my days again, work became meaningful and my prayers were answered, and I was so lucky and so happy to begin again. And it's been that way ever since. So many new things to learn, explore, and understand. I've become part of a team again and it's been a great blessing, to feel like I belong after a year of isolation and loneliness. To know you're in it with someone, together — I love that feeling now. The hardheaded independent girl in her early 20s has shapeshifted into a hardheaded interdependent girl in her late 20s. She is still strong-willed but she listens more. Her idea of work is more malleable than it was before.

I am so grateful now to be able to work anywhere, and the world feels so open again. Like the next opportunities will come, and to stay awake for them, to think of them as a flow of life, and to still plan in advance enough to feel like if they don't, home is always a flight away. To know the net of home is always underneath me. And I perhaps would've never learned this if not for 2023.

In 2024 I also fell in love. I hesitate to say that, because my ego hates the idea of having a love who didn't even let you tell them you loved them. But anyway, I digress. He is a really special person who is kind, intelligent, and soft in all the ways I love, but he also needed to face a lot of silence in his life. And there's no space for me in his life if he doesn't address the silence that stifles him, that doesn't let him breathe or get closer to me. I understood how it isn't personal, how even if you extend your heart out in your hands, someone might not want to, not be able to receive it. what an important thing that is to learn. It fills me with certainty and peace to know I did all I could. I've done all I can. And I showed myself, again, the ways I cope; booking trips and events and making endless plans to keep myself busy. Until the crash inevitably comes, until you have to confront yourself. Again and again. Life is always showing me that wherever you go, there you are. In different flavors, but nevertheless - there you always are.

And now the fall passed and all of a sudden it's winter. I'm leaning into saying yes and no more often in equal measure rather than allowing myself to take something, whatever it is, just because it's being offered: there's a difference between an offering and having to take it. You don't need to take every offense being offered. You don't need to show up to every showdown. You don't need to battle someone's projections. You don't need to argue with someone's idea of who you are. You can choose to continue, and to let it be as it is. Let people get mad! Let people be who they are. Let it be what it is!!!!!

And now I'll turn 28 with this feeling of peace and tranquility. The kind of peace that comes when you make peace with the year. When you accept what has been and you think, "That was that!" And there's nothing else left inside you to try and change it or negotiate with it or find a sense of hard-won redemption in. The redemption is in just accepting what was. Embracing it, even - even if it feels like the hot iron that was 2023 branded me so deeply I will forever be different than the person I was before. From it came the year of the dragon and the year of going home. The year of understanding more roots before it is time to bloom. To understand my ancestry a little better and put feelings to the women who painted the past and in doing so, created the future.

It might be true that we romanticize struggle, that overcoming adversity has its own merit, that sweating and pushing and straining can make success feel more hard-won. And yet I don't want to strain and push anymore - I succeeded when I did just the opposite. So I think my biggest wish is to remember surrender when life brings another strange, unexpected test of endurance. As if to say, do you remember? Do you remember who you were before the storm arrived? Hold on to her. She will hold on to you.