Goodbye 2020

I know that this year has presented all of us with significant challenges and there are many who would care to forget this year, and walk into 2021 to never speak of 2020 again, yet I am not one of those people. While this year has presented situations that I would care not to repeat, there have been exceptional moments as well. This year has challenged me in unexpected ways and I love the person that I am becoming from the growth this year.

I started this year alone, standing at the top of a mountain watching the first rays of the sun strike and color the land. It was cold, it was peaceful, and it was beautiful. I began my year of with trips planned and adventure in my heart. How was I to know that the adventure would not be what I imagined, yet an adventure it would be. Only a few short days into 2020 I had a phone call and conversation that has altered my entire life. 2020 has brought me to Rue McKenrick and the American Perimeter Trail. In that single phone call and the few that occurred over those next few weeks I rapidly found myself engaged into some amazing and unique, a passion project that is quickly evolving into a life change. Rue and I forged a friendship and bond through our work, quickly transitioning from business partners to best friends. There is not enough I can say about this man, my best friend, and it is thanks to 2020 that I have him in my life, in my children's lives. We have walked through significant trials over the past 12 months, challenging each other, challenging our beliefs, emotions and so much more. I marvel at how much we have both changed, and in many ways, outgrown our current situations. The coming year and future has much in store for us and the trail organization.

While the trail and Rue have occupied a significant amount of my time, the year has also brought me stronger friendships with some, some have faded, and new ones have entered. What a blessing to be brought 2 new friends that listen, support, and guide. These 2 individuals may not quite understand the impact that they have had on my life this year, but they have, even if it has been quietly in the background. I have struggled for years watching the large groups of friends and wishing I was a piece of them, but 2020 has brought me peace with my unconventional group of friends. Most of my close friends are not local to me, but spread across the country, and I have finally found peace and acceptance with this difference. Another gift of 2020 that I choose not to return.

2020 has brought significant time with children, rough times, fun times, chaos, but most of all LOVE. Our little family of 5 has become an even more solid unit and I have watched each blossom into their roles, beings and step into themselves. Everyday I witness a little bit more of them growing and changing and I am thankful for these opportunities that 2020 has brought. I wish I could say that I am a more patient mother, but I am not. I am more aware of them and their needs though, and how to assist them in navigating this ever changing situation.

As we celebrate the close of 2020 tonight I am thankful and blessed for all the people that I met this year, from those that have hiked with me, to those that chose to walk/drift away, and those that entered my life shining with love. My word for this year was adventure and adventure I have had. Blessed be 2020.

30 Days of Thanks: November 30, 2020

It's Monday, a full moon, and the end of the month. Tomorrow dawns the last month of 2020, and this post should be a beautiful summary of all of the gratitude that I have recorded over the past 30 days, yet it will not. I could certainly write all of that, but it would not ring true as that is not where my head and heart are at this moment.

Tonight, as I sit here hurting, I am thankful for the ability to love deeply, to be that vulnerable with my heart and myself. I sit tonight with tears in my eyes, sadness present, and fighting the instinct to shut it all down. For when you love openly and vulnerably you may hurt, and my heart wants to protect itself. It is yelling, screaming, pleading to close down, throw up the walls, hide away, and protect! protect! protect! Instead, I sit here letting those feeling wash over me, the tears flowing freely, dripping on my keyboard, my open pages of the letter I wrote but will not send. It simply hurts. It is old traumas coming to surface, it is new experiences intermingling with the old and a moment for cleansing and healing.

I am thankful for the ability to know that I can love that vulnerably. I am thankful for the previous experiences that allow me enough vision in this painful moment to recognize that the instinctual withdrawal is a protective mechanism and I have a choice. I can lean into the pain, or I can flee. You can read here that I chose the pain; fleeing does nothing expect create more trauma. With that I sit here wondering the path forward, yet knowing that in this moment I cannot see the path, nor could I safely choose a path. Choosing a path in this moment would be to grasp the thorny stem of the rose with a fist and squeeze, painful and a poor choice. I will trust that the next steps of the path are there, just hidden under the leaves.

Love, and loving openly, is a gift, and as it blooms so does the individual. I choose to bloom.

30 Days of Thanks: November 29, 2020

As the end of November draws near and today is the first Sunday of Advent I find myself thankful for the waiting period. Advent is a period of waiting, a period of darkness, a period for transformation. I am not by nature a patient person, I have some patience, but never enough it feels to me. This year I am thankful for practicing patience, learning to be comfortable in the discomfort of waiting, and learning to live in the waiting place.

You can put your life on hold while waiting, or you can choose to live it. I have been faced with multiple waiting periods over 2020, as have many of us, and each time I have chosen to live within that period. It was not always easy, it was not always comfortable, and certainly it was not my choice to be waiting. With the beginning of Advent we await Christ's birth, a period of darkness before the star and the light of his birth. I am thankful for this period of waiting now upon us. I use December to reflect, meditate, and ground myself after the year. With all the changes that have occurred in 2020 I am thankful for this waiting period now present. I will wait, I will practice more patience, and I will live. My life will not wait, but will continue to follow and seek a life less ordinary.