Three days left in 2023. And so it is time to review the year just past. And my first thought, “it was a very good year...” Sure, there were problems, issues, endings, pain, sadness, loss and suffering. But those things were interspersed with a great deal of love, growth and fundamentally changes patterns of relating, living and loving.
I entered this last year in a committed relationship to a man I still love but have found that our mutual need for healing and growth leaves us in a place where we cannot be together (at least this is what I need, I am not sure in reality what he needs and leave that for him to figure out).
It was a relationship that caused me to grow in ways that I desperately needed to and I am now not the same woman who began this year...like at all. The things I am willing to tolerate, the things I am willing to not say, the things I am wiling to say, the things I am willing to keep quiet are all fundamentally and forever changed (hopefully). This year has caused me to come into my own in ways that I have desperately needed for, well, ever. And now, while the healing is never really done, and the growth and growing pains continue, I am not the same woman I was in ways that I have never been able to change heretofore.
So much has changed inside me, while the outside, the exterior of my being remains largely unchanged. I am rearranged on the inside and that has allowed me to just let the exterior be, while still remaining accountable for the maintenance of both my spiritual condition and the facade that entombs my being. I see that the body, or host, requires maintenance, care, love and nourishment in the same way and manner that my emotional and spiritual state demands as well.
So as this year draws to a close, I embrace this body, this mind, this spirit as being quite different than the one I entered the year with, and I acknowledge that I am better for the work required and effort made.
As I am present and accountable to the year just passed, I look forward to the coming year and the changes it will bring. So here is a look back and a look forward...
2023
Learned some very hard love lessons and grew into a new version of myself
Learned to love with less strings and conditions than I ever have before
Allowed myself some down time to heal and change and grow so that I can blossom into whatever comes next
Learned to be more honest with myself and others and allowed the fear that always accompanied that to just fall away
Allowed new women into my world, while holding onto the women I already have that make my world a better place and hopefully I contributed similarly to theirs.
Spoke my truth with fear of reprisal and said it anyway
Allowed the universe to take away the things and people that were supposed to go and allowed the ones that were supposed to come to be here with me
Didn’t think that I knew better than the universe
Allowed myself to work, to not work and to grant passage to all the opportunities that 2023 brought
Came to a new understanding about myself, what I have to offer and who is capable and worthy of being offered it
Allowing those who are not interested in matching my effort to just be who they are while I move on with my path
Accepted the gift of grace in my life every single day
2024
I have no idea what is to come...and that is a gift unto itself
I will travel abroad and explore what feels like a homeland once removed
I will move forward in this life, with care for myself and others with good boundaries and an open heart
I will embrace myself as I am while always challenging myself to go farther and deeper
I will allow this delicate being that exists at my center more expression because I have worked so hard, and continue to work so hard to pull away all the ideas, beliefs and limits I have places upon her
I will love myself, my children, my parents, my friends, my pets with all that I am while always remembering that I must always fill my own cup and reserve enough of me for me
I will accept my age, my trauma, my healing and my spirit as the miraculous gift it truly is and not spend one more minute regretting any of it
I will be open to love in all its varied forms
I will do good work, reveling in the contentment it brings for me to assist people in peril, like a candle in a time of darkness, lighting my own path and theirs also
So 2023, thank you for the lessons, the blessings, the growth, the change, the love, the loss, the heartbreak, the pain, the sorrow, the joy, the happiness, the complete rearrangement of my body, mind and soul. 2024, I am ready for you...let’s do this!
