Walking straight into 2020 all turned inside out from the crazy wonderful life of opportunities, people, travel and new life in a most beautiful grandchild brought to me in 2019, I felt ready for it all or so I thought. My vision only as wide as the world I had experienced and could comprehend living in, at my wiser every day, but naïve age of 51. If 2019 turned me inside out and dragged me by my ankles showing me I was ready for more, 2020 was the yin to that yang. This was a year of going from the outside in, literally and figuratively. A year of learning beyond any doubt that you can plan the plan but you can’t plan the outcome. I loaded up my goals list and made my reservations feeling all to certain of what the year would hold in travel and time with family and friends, my first grandchild’s first birthday gathering, thoughts of work travels and meeting new people and it was to be a busy year of living the life I love as I created my thoughts of what that would mean. I learned so much in 2019 and was ready to go after it all in 2020 and feeling like I knew what that would look like was a misstep I will never forget.
Nature and life had other plans for 2020 and so things were cancelled, changed and changed again due to a global pandemic called covid-19. I will forever remember the many things learned this year and the first of which is, we are never ever fully in control no matter how hard we try, and yes I do think there is a part of me that fully accepted that this year. I learned a lot, this quiet stay home year of 2020. It will be hard to see it in pictures and even share in words but the depth of what I learned is more intense than any other year. I think I finally hear my own heart and I let it hurt when it needs to and the fear I used to feel for things I would imagine as real, well they can’t measure what real fear is when you think of losing family or not seeing your family and feeling hugs. That is real fear, the kind that makes my heart hurt. This listening to your own heart thing has real power, allowing the vulnerability and opening yourself to sharing that with others brings more peace and love than you truly knew you needed.
I am choosing to really see and feel all of the goodness that 2020 brought to my life too. I lost some of my intensity this year and replaced it slowly with intention, and I laugh at how much more internal strength I found with that one thing. I was able to hear my own excuses, rationalizations and witness my own insecurities enough to finally create changes that will be life changing. I lost the need to prove love and let love prove itself. I accepted that I may not be an artist but I love to create art and I made space in my life to do just that no longer needing to be good enough at anything but just allowing my mind to open. I became even more grateful than I already was that I not only love my husband, I really like him too and we found many ways to become stronger as a couple in the simple moments we were just us, together. Love kept growing all year and a big highlight for the year was seeing my son and his family prepare for the next big adventure with a Will you marry me and a she said yes. And with nowhere to go my daughter and I can have a beautiful visit sitting on the sofa and talking for hours while putting together a vision board of all our dreams. We grew our family with an adoption of a cat we chose to name Romeo and he is a lover and we nicknamed him Romee. I hung on every little bit of laughter over the phone, Kiki and hello on my many talks with my son being an amazing daddy to his little boy and they filled my days with happy. I will forever remember go go go and bubbles time with the wide eyed wonder of a smiley little boy that melts my heart and calls me Kiki and the family time we did get in the beauty of a national park and cabins and witnessing a herd of elk meander in the yard of Rockmount Cottages in Estes Park. I discovered the joy in a porch beer happy hour with a dear friend and waving to an adorable little next door neighbor with big eyes and a beautiful smile that is close in age to my grandson which only feels like a beautiful wink from life. I learned just how far away it feels when the ones you love are safer being kept at a distance and separated by glass but the health of your loved ones truly is the most important over any of my own wants and needs. A four hour flight and two hour car drive will never feel long again if family on the other end and yet a drive for 20 minutes to the next city to go shopping feels like torture since I am never in the car anymore. Gas takes up a lot of money so I would have saved a lot this year, but so does a Dunkin coffee every day and habits sometimes are the only thing that get you through and so I created a new not so healthy habit. My daily trip to DD for ½ mile to get a coffee became an actual adventure. I learned that as an introvert that also loves people it can get weird sometimes when you love the peace of working from home but also truly miss the connection that comes from an in person meeting. 2020 went from let’s go to stay home, from smile and connect to mask up and socially distant, hugging to air hugs, gramma kiki in person fun to connection through a glass screen, dinner out & happy hours to home cooked meals & driveway porch visits, work clothes to yoga pants, work travel to new cities to working from a home office and not leaving the house, filled up calendars to quiet unstructured time, social to distant, open to closed, we are in this together to masks vs non masks. The whole world together in this pause of life, thinking maybe by next month it will be better as it only continued to worsen. The pandemic of covid-19 was changing us in ways that would forever be with us. The flood of memories as the world lost a beautiful fun loving, irish jig dancing man that made the world, my life and the lives of my children better, more full and more fun as their poppy, he really knew how to make life lighter. He will be missed by all who knew him and I am sure all will dance a little more and smile a little bigger to carry his memory on with that love of life and family he showed us how to have. RIP Poppy
The fastest slowest year ever that felt like a time warp, was unique and different and harder and easier too and I am grateful for my blessings, the love and my family and friends, memories of people no longer with us but yet with us always.
Taking this much more humbled and very real and vulnerable self and walking very intentional healthy steps one at a time forward into 2021.