Endings

another strange trip

I look forward to the holidays every year. Nothing is quite as magical and nostalgic. The cozy time in, the giving of gifts, the reasons to come together and catch up over sugary desserts. I shamelessly love the aesthetic of it all, the Christmas trees and twinkly lights and cute winter mittens. The week between Christmas and New Years basically only exists for sleeping in and hanging out with friends. So chic!

Oh 2024. Another year has passed.

2024 for me was marked by deepening relationships, realigning priorities, and the continued pursuit of strong quads and good sleep hygiene.

Every year I choose a word, a guiding intention for the year ahead. This year my word was ‘health’. Hoping that I would end the year in a better space than I started, I tried to spend less time fixating on the big questions and more time focusing in on small changes within my control. We started off strong. Then, I hit a wall this summer. Everything felt like an immovable mountain: my physical health, my mental health, my emotional health. I cried a lot. Mix that in with the political hellfire we live in and it’s not hard to feel like

I’m proud that despite the struggles I persisted. I made my way to new doctors, spent hours with my beloved therapist, prioritized quality time with friends and family, and am on a journey to break up with my cell phone. If I had to give myself a grade, I think I’m in the solid B+/A- range, and I’ll take it. My tendency to over-analyze everything continues to make easy things harder, but I’m working on it! I’m taking my fiber supplement! I’m wearing sunscreen!

Sweetness dotted the seasons. A best friend’s summer camp wedding, lots of hiking in beautiful places, an engagement (my own!), many excellent books filled in the days. And, a highlight of every year, we cooked great food. We backyard barbecued, made birthday cakes, hosted Friendsgiving, baked bread, cooked with the fruits of our small garden. I continue to find solace in the daily practice of preparing food and sharing it. Cooking is a teacher that calls me back to basics. In the kitchen I feel grounded and at ease.

Something I’m thinking on a lot is how to stay present during a phase of life where everything changes so fast. Jobs, living arrangements, relationship statuses are so in flux in your 20s and 30s and you might not have strong roots yet. I wrote about this in a summer post - about the slightly overwhelming notion that there’s no way to guarantee that your life will follow a certain path, no matter how certain things feel today. Historically this gives me anxiety. In five years I’ll be married and could own a home and maybe have a child, or could change career paths and go back to school and move to a new city and - - - let’s not spiral together. Because this uncertainty can be hard for me to sit with, it tends to pull me out of the present and into my head. I’m working to, instead of wrestle with this discomfort, be friends with it, and knowing that all I can do is make the best choice in front of me and trust that when the next choice arrives, I’ll continue to do the same. There is no one right path to a good life.

I’m sitting with the highs and lows of this year. I tried to write many times over the months and it felt hard. We are bombarded with breaking news every day of a world that feels like it’s in free fall. How do you describe the numbness of trying to make it through the work day while you’re watching live streamed suffering from your couch? Most days it just makes me terribly sad. I don’t pretend to know the answers.

There’s no doubt we’re living in tough times. Terry Tempest Williams, in one of my favorite books When Women Were Birds, writes, “Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” I think of this often when I feel a deep sense of dread. We have lived and lived and lived through darkness. We have stayed and endured. We have evolved. There are times when all we can do is tend to the world in the ways we know how, loving and cherishing our neighbors, showing up each day more in tune with our shared humanity and cultivating joy. In these small ways we can keep hope alive.

But what do I know. It’s Cynthia Erivo’s world and I’m just living in it.