Wonder and Remembrance
Dear 2022,
Last night you left me; you hang now like a shadow after noonday. Just behind me, I sense you close at my heels reminding me of your lingering. You suggest to me that I not forget, that I don’t let you go too quickly. What have you given and who am I after you?
I entered you bravely, 2022, with my eyes and heart set toward possibility. Last year as you began I wrote this as I wondered over so much that I could not know, but could imagine: I will teach again, and it will be a class with a story I haven’t yet planned. I’ll awake to colors just beginning to streak the sky and I will be delighted for the day on the brink of becoming. Someone I love will make me laugh. Someone I don’t know personally on the screen will crack me up. There are people I’ve not yet met who will touch my life (each year a new group of teacher trainees changes me a bit more forever). I will do work I hadn’t even considered. I will write more words that I couldn’t predict how they’d form together. I will be thrilled to see someone I love who I’ve missed. I imagine there will be some mountain path I’ve not yet hiked, some new recipe I’ll create, a new puzzle to complete, an ocean I’ve never swam in before.
And 2022, every single thing came to pass. Indeed I did teach again. And again. With stories I could not possibly have known. Teaching to people who needed a slow and gentle rhythm of movement. Teaching to people who are barely mobile. Teaching of movement and myth while overlooking the Aegean Sea. Teaching in a room of 72 people during a Winter Solstice event I once imagined was gone from my life for good.
I woke to sunrises that startled me. From my front porch rocker, I watched as the sun crested over the farmer’s field across the street. I watched the sun rise in Athens over a harbor filled with boats, standing next to my husband and one of my best friends. I was delighted each and every time I watched the colors streak and found myself so often stopped in my tracks with delight. 2022, your mornings broke with colors I couldn’t imagine on my own.
I laughed with my daughter on a road trip, with my son when he spoke truth, with my husband when he gently called me out and when we ganged up on our teens, with my friends until tears streamed down my face. I watched TikTok videos sent by a friend with the sole intention of making me laugh and I found how very kindred so many of us are. Laughter, 2022, broke through me like shafts of light, like fireworks, like a flashlight beam in the middle of long tunnel.
Oh and, yes, there were people and work I couldn’t cook up a year ago. New Greek friends, new retreat friends, friends in Baltimore and in Shenandale, humans filled with such wonder and joy, heartache and celebration that my soul nearly burst in their presence. Work with teenagers and children and adults that broke me open and reminded me that, yes, possibilities don’t cease just because one chapter ends. Words that needed to be written and found a home to be read. Words that often seemed not my own at all but that had to be spoken. Thank you, 2022, for reminding me that I am and always have been more than one small identity.
Oh and friends who came back or welcomed me back. Yes, people I’ve missed who scatter the country. People I’ve longed for but had no idea they’d be right in my home, that I’d be right in theirs. And the people you took, 2022, not only to death but to faraway places, to new stages. You’ve left me with ache, with longing, with remembrance of life’s precious ticking. You made sure this year I learned again how to live, how to slow down and appreciate, how to speak truth, how to let go, and how to die.
I made orange rolls and new salads, tried recipes for seafood and chicken, ate the best stuffed tomatoes and peppers, discovered the joy of Greek food; hiked a mountain in Greece, swam in the Aegean, started a puzzle that’s coming with me to this new year. I discovered and read voices that filled me with hope, with curiosity, with kinship. I saw the light come back in my daughter’s eyes and rejoiced that she wasn’t so far gone. I watched my son skyrocket above each of us and discover a passionate zest for his own life. 2022, you unfolded in me like an elegy—beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful, full with life and death, and images that moved in turns unimaginable.
Who am I having lived you, 2022? I am more of me, older and often more tired. I find myself trusting a little more, leaning closer to my loved ones, keeping my eyes a little more open. You have been a year, this is true. I heard people say as you started that you would have to be better than the last. But you were just a year—lovely in ways and horrible, too. So, thank you, 2022, for reminding me that possibilities exist, that things I can only imagine come to be, that each year isn’t really intended to be better than the last, but that I can be—better, that is, if better means more alive, more me, more open and trusting, gentler to myself and the world, and full of wonder for what has been and what might be.
Happy New Year Friends. If you’re anything like me, you might love the long, open space of a new calendar year beginning, but cringe at the need to rush headlong to fill it all. I hope the time you read this message gives you a moment of presence, to ground, to slow down, to rest in yourself here for a moment.
Last March, I began this undertaking in hope that someone, somewhere might want to stay connected and that perhaps my contemplations would give others space for their own, that folks might feel less alone in the world. I never imagined just what an incredible community it would be. Thank you for walking this past year with me. I can’t tell you how nice it is to feel you all out there.
Next week I’ll send a new video for paid subscribers. For this week, some thoughts: The new year begins during the darkest and shortest days. Nature beckons us to experience winter. It’s a quieter, pared down time of year, a time of less activity, more hibernation. Maybe instead of rushing to plan and prepare and know 2023 so soon, take a little time and reflect instead. Write your own letter to 2022. What possibilities did you imagine last year? What came to pass that you didn’t imagine? Who are you having lived this past year? Perhaps there have been “crappies” and “happies.” Feel into it all. Go for walks outside. Maybe write a letter to your loved ones, retreat a bit with some candles. Be intentional about resisting pressure to have it all figured out or to demand that this year somehow start or unfold as anything but a year. Let your life speak, friends, and I’ll imagine seeing you here, remaining together in 2023. Oh, and share with me should you desire. I love to hear from you.