Warning:  Trigger post ahead.  I know discussing the pandemic is a sensitive topic for many but I work in healthcare, I have family members on both sides of the fence, and I believe there needs to be real change in our society.

In my last piece I discussed choosing to be better, choosing to do better and not let the bitterness of the year seep in.  Today I saw a quote talking about the new year coming in and “giving 2020 the send off it deserves.”  I found myself becoming increasingly angry the longer I thought about the seemingly innocuous words.  I mean, who wouldn’t agree that we would like to put this time behind us? But there is so much wrong with that statement, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

Saying things like “giving 2020 the send off it deserves” is really dangerous because it implies two things: 1. That this is just a rough patch of time and the problem will go away if we give it time, like the calendar turns to 2021 and we get a reprieve.  2. It removes all sense of personal accountability from this situation.  This problem won’t be behind us until we make actual change, and until we all wake up and understand that we need do things differently, this story isn’t going to change any time soon.  This pandemic isn’t something that will resolve itself if we ignore it.  We will be living one giant groundhog day until we start to look at this situation differently. 

We have a tendency to believe that we are never really at fault for anything.  I mean, human nature, I know, and no one likes to take the hit for the team.  The thing with a pandemic, however, is that every single one of us has to take the hit for the team or none of us gets anywhere.  To put it plainly, until we all take the necessary steps (like masking and social distancing and not shopping unnecessarily) this disease will go nowhere.  The disease doesn’t move itself, humans move it.  So until we stop treating this crisis like this half-way pseudo scary (but mostly inconvenient) thing where we pretend we are sacrificing (but really we are trying to cling to everything we used to do), THIS ISN’T GOING ANYWHERE.  And it sucks because the longer we live in that in between, the longer this stays around.

This is the realest example of how intertwined we all are, how my health depends on your actions.  How my actions can hurt you.  Thinking that we can move into a new year without understanding our personal impact is going to keep us rooted right where we are.  We’ve been privileged enough to pretend that our wants are more important than other people’s needs.  Those days are over.  Your feelings do not outweigh my right to live without fear of catching this disease.  Your “need” to see your friends doesn’t mean shit when I have to go to work and see the repercussions of this disease daily.  Your tantrum about any inconvenience you’ve suffered does not outrank the people who have suffered real loss this year (jobs, families, homes, the ability to put food on the table, etc.).

I really do want us to move on to better times—I wish I could pretend this doesn’t exist.  And hell yes, I’ve had moments of weakness where I wanted to go to the store just because I needed something different to do—I’ve even broken down and gone to Target.  I’m not perfect. But I don’t want to raise my kid like this.  He’s three years old and already knows that he can’t walk into a store without a mask on.  He spent an entire summer out of the parks and away from his friends.  No matter the personal stories I share, I know that things won’t be better until we really develop some self-awareness about our impact and social responsibility.  Talking about changing the year like we change our underwear isn’t going to make anything go away.  It won’t make anything different.  Changing how we think and how we approach our lives is what will make a difference. 

Side note: I know there wasn’t any harm meant with the post I read.  I know it was meant as an inspirational quote—and there is value in that.  I just think we need to be careful with how we phrase things because there is a lot at stake.

Josh Shipp said, “You either get bitter or you get better.  It’s that simple…the choice does not belong to fate, it belongs to you.”  I like saying it like this: you get better or you get bitter—the only difference is the “I.”  Too often we forget our inherent, innate power.

Life is a series of transitions and changes, and right now (well, this year in particular) we have been forced to adapt and change over and over and over again.  There are no answers for what is going on right now.  People are desperate to get back to some sense of what they knew as normal—because it had an element of control.  My life has been no exception and I am in the process of realigning.

The truth is control is an illusion.  Yes we have control over when we wake up, when we leave for work, what clothes we wear.  But control over the grand scheme of things is non-existent.  We are on a divine plan, not our own.  We create situations of control to feel empowered.  Real power is derived from a sense of knowing who we are, not from what we acquire or what we attempt to have power over.  Power is in our relationships with ourselves. 

Upheaval and change, especially unexpected change can create a sense of anxiety as well as a sense of anger.  But understanding that life really does guide us where we need to be is a step toward engaging with the natural flow of things.  Upheaval isn’t always a bad thing—sometimes it is the universe saying you are ready to level up and it is time to move on.

There is a lot to be bitter about this year.  There have been innumerable losses (many of them preventable–alas, that is a different story) of people, jobs, things that have torn away who we thought we were.  Yet there is this remarkable chance to create a new foundation for ourselves, one based on who we really are.  That gives me hope.  I choose to be better.  I choose to keep the bitterness out of my heart.  I choose to do more than make the best of other people’s bad decisions—I choose to make my own decisions.  I choose to love this life and to be grateful for it because I have a life.  Choose better. 

Today I am grateful for redesigned priorities.  I’ve faced a lot of transitions this week and each of those situations has helped me clarify what is really important—beyond what I thought I wanted.  In each case, while I have had twinges of frustration that things didn’t seem to be going my way, I have simultaneously felt clearer, more guided, and more aligned.  My priorities weren’t necessarily the priorities that I needed to focus on.

Today I am grateful for my health.  That has become my main priority at this point and I am developing a plan to figure out what is going on with me as well as a plan to keep myself on track once we have an idea of what the issue is.  I’m also grateful that I’ve spent the last several months already adjusting and working on my food intake because I knew my health was going to be a priority.

Today I am grateful for time well spent.  Part of reprioritizing is also revamping how I spend my time.  We are gifted with only so many days and it is important to spend them wisely.  What that means to each of us is different, but I know that means doing things that bring me joy, that bring me closer to my purpose, and things that are fulfilling.  All of that has a new meaning to me now.  Taking care of my health means I will be around to take care of my family and those who need me.  So I am grateful to make decisions on how to purposefully spend my time.

Today I am grateful spontaneity and for my parents in particular for going along with it.  Today is my husband’s birthday and we were able to (safely) go out for a few hours this morning and my parents took our son so we could take a break for a little bit.  My husband and I were able to spend some time together not focusing on the house or on work and I was able to bring him somewhere he wanted to go.

Today I am grateful for confidence.  There was a brief incident today where I had made a mistake while I was out with my husband.  Some of the (very few) people who were there noticed and a few people made comments.  I stopped for a little bit and sat out for about 30 minutes to gather my bearings.  In that moment I realized that is what I always did—and just as quickly that I didn’t want to be that person anymore.  I picked up and joined in again.  I am a fully grown adult—and I had almost let someone talk me out of doing what I wanted to be doing simply because they were judgy.  I literally said, “Not today,” and tried again.  We ended up having a great time.

Today I am grateful for my sweet son.  He has been struggling with the current state of things lately.  He’s a toddler and he has been hearing a lot of, “No” lately when it comes to the things he wants to do.  Perfectly normal stage, I know, but I can see that with things being so restricted now, his frustration is building and building.  In spite of that, he absolutely amazes me.  We are in the process of reorganizing and I had some cloth bins sitting in his play room waiting to be put into the cubes for the last week.  Tonight he came into my room and asked me to come see what he did.  He had opened the bins and started putting his toys in them.  Such a sweet boy.                

 We all have a lot to be thankful for—I hope you all have a wonderful week!        

Things took a turn for me this week.  In my last piece I discussed the low grade melancholy and the need for self-love/self-acceptance.  Well, I listened to that inner knowing and I went to the doctor for the first time in four years.  I’ve had a multitude of symptoms for quite some time and while I was grocery shopping last weekend a sharp stabbing pain took over my abdomen followed by intense swelling/bloating.  Clearly this wasn’t going to resolve itself any longer.  So I went in to the doctor and ended up getting a CT less than an hour after describing my symptoms and being looked at.

The test didn’t give me all the answers and I have quite a few follow up appointments next week, but it potentially explained so much of why I feel the way I do.  Once I have more results confirmed, I will be able to speak more about that.

All these years I have believed that I needed to be in control of everything.  What’s more is that I believed I was a failure if I couldn’t control everything.  I have believed that, as a species, we should be able to make a decision and control our actions to get the results we wanted and that it showed something “wrong” if you weren’t getting results.  One test has shown me that 1. Not everything is in our control and 2. Sometimes the behaviors we accept in ourselves and feel we can’t change are NOT the result of our upbringing or our brain structure, but something else in our body.

Going to the doctor showed me that there are other possible answers to what I believed was a done deal so to speak.  That inner knowing told me that I needed to give up the control and go get help—even as I wrote about self-love, that was something telling me to pay attention to my body.  Even if I waited until that inner knowing became an incredibly painful message that brought me to my knees, I eventually listened.  And I am so glad I did.

While I still need to find some answers, a couple hours at the hospital set me on the right track.  It also affirmed that once you set your mind to something, the universe responds.  Too many times I have set the intention to take care of myself and have fallen off the wagon or I haven’t followed through.  This time the universe put me in a situation where I had no choice but to take care of myself—and even show me that there may be real physical reasons for the way I feel.  So I have options.  They are options that I didn’t anticipate having to work through, but I believe they are the right ones even if they are different than I had hoped.

I hope my story is an example of trusting your intuition, following it, and taking things one day at a time.  My priorities have shifted significantly in the last 24 hours—and I am glad.  While it is a blessing to have options and means to do things, sometimes we need that narrowed down—at least I do.  I let my world get too cluttered and take on more than I can chew. I’m going to spend the next few days prioritizing and taking care of my health because that is what needs to be done now.  The rest will fall into place.               

I’ve been doing a lot of root-cause analysis about where I am today.  While I’m not miserable, I have been feeling a constant low-grade melancholy lately.  Just a feeling that something is off and a general unhappiness with how things are going.  I know we’ve all been there: some days things just suck.  You don’t see the way out and any ray of light that shines your way feels like it’s mocking you.

Some messages repeat until you understand them and I believe that if you aren’t happy with where you’re at then you need to adjust and realign to get where you want to be.  For me, I have to learn to love myself unconditionally.  It isn’t easy for me to have that kind of emotion toward myself because I’m stuck behind needing to be worthy—I haven’t learned to accept that I’m inherently worthy. But we all deserve love.  And that means starting with completely, unashamedly, and unconditionally accepting and loving ourselves. I need to do that for myself as well.

Part of that unconditional love is making friends with myself.  I’ve had a tendency to devalue myself and to put people on a pedestal as if their contributions are more valuable than mine—or that I have nothing to contribute of value.  But if I love myself unconditionally, that means the highest version of myself isn’t too good for me—she’s waiting for me.  She’s not expecting perfection, she’s expecting me to get off my ass and do SOMETHING. 

I really need to let go of the past—like actually do it.  Let it lie.  Honor it, feel grateful for the lessons, and bury it.  There is nothing new there and there is nothing that can be changed about events that have already happened.  They are done.  They have served their purpose.  So pay homage and move on.    

So with these little epiphanies, I follow Gabby Bernstein’s quote, “Lean toward joy and be led.”  It is right and necessary to do what feels good, interesting, or appropriate rather than cloud myself with what I “should” do or what is “the right thing.”  Leaning toward joy is all about listening to that little voice inside that I’ve always tried to repress—the inner knowing.

Lastly, I realized I need to walk away when my boundaries aren’t respected and when I am not heard—when people choose to not hear me.  I am allowed to assert myself with confidence.  Setting limits isn’t rude—that conditioning needs to go away.

Stop fighting, start flowing and decide what comes next.  Then learn, adapt, try again, and evolve as necessary.  Be. Do. That’s all we have to do—and that is enough.