Bye-Bye to 2024

2024 has been one of the busiest years I can remember. It has been a year filled with activity, fun, a lot of visitors, travel, sadness, sickness, loss and gain, darkness followed by insight, disappointment, hope, anger, and yet, through it all, I have had peace within. 

I finished putting together my new book, an anthology for and about women. Thanks to the 22 women who courageously wrote their stories and submitted them to me, I have an inspiring book to offer the women of the world. Hopefully, it will be published in 2025. My new book title is From There to Here.

My year started with my catching the flu and feeling really bad. At the same time, Paul and I adopted a rambunctious, strong-willed puppy. As our puppy physically grew and got bigger and stronger, so did his strong will. Finally, after six week of training and his pulling me and walking me, we decided we needed to rehome him. We had both fallen in love with him but I knew I could not handle him. He went to a really good home and whenever I hear from the people who took him, he seems to be happy and a part of their family. 

In March, after a CT scan of my lungs, I was told I had a sessile mass in the first portion of my duodenum and I needed to have an endoscopy to see what it was. For some reason, this did not ring true for me. After being sent to a GI doctor who strongly suggested the endoscopy, I agreed to have the procedure done. On the day of the test, I told the doctor I was there so we could all rule out that there was a mass. I felt it was a shadow on the scan. I was right! There was no mass, so that was put to bed. Hallelujah.

Thanks to my son, Mac, we saw a lot of live theater this year. We started the year with The Simon and Garfunkel Story, followed by Life and Times of the Temptations, Jersey Boys (for the 3rd time), To Kill a Mockingbird, Celtic Women, Frankie Valli and Mama Mia. 

Our home seemed to be filled with guests all throughout the year, plus we did a fair bit of traveling. In May one of my granddaughters got married so the family met in Charlotte, NC for a couple of days. In July, we flew to North Georgia for a 4th of July family reunion. In August, I rode to Boone, NC with a friend and spent 4 days with a close sister friend and also spent the night in Abingdon with my daughter, Angela. I flew to New Orléans in August to be with my great-grandson on his 15th birthday. In October, I drove to Pennsylvania to spend 4 days with another sister friend. It was a busy year.

In March, we began the construction of our new screened in porch and deck. Paul designed and built it so we were involved every weekend for 3 months. Because we were so involved in this project we did not get to take our annual motorcycle vacation. 

This year, I learned to deal better and more consciously with my long covid and its myriad symptoms. I am happy to report that for the most part the extreme fatigue is gone. I still get tired and have to get in  my recliner for a nap and a rest, but that is nowhere near as bad as it had been. I now use a broncho-dilator to help open my airways and that that has helped me to breathe a little easier. Since the medical profession has no answers,I am learning to manage this disease by advocating for myself. I read clinical trial results, I am active on long covid websites and I now take different medicinal mushrooms, which seem to be helping in some areas. 

I consider 2024 to be a good year, one that I have enjoyed immensely. It has probably been one of my better years in recent times.

I will be 83 in January and I do look forward to celebrating another trip around the sun, however I am not looking forward to 2025. I strongly sense the incoming tide of darkness, chaos, uncertainty and mayhem that are on the horizon. I have a certain amount of fear and dread over what it looks like is going to happen to Medicare, Social Security, social services for the indigent, insurance for the masses, Medicaid, Head Start for the children and health care for women. I shudder to think that the least of our society, children and the elderly, may no longer be cared for. It sickens me in my gut to know women who are suffering miscarriages are bleeding out in hospital waiting rooms and their own homes because doctors are too afraid to treat them, for fear of going to jail. In my world, this is insanity. Truthfully, I have no hope of this getting better in 2025. 

Even without hope for a better world next year, I am still walking into 2025 filled with love, determination and kindness for the planet and its inhabitants. I am determined to walk and stand in light and to stay present. I pray for courage to stand strong and resist that which is against my values and morals, as I stand strong for the rights of all citizens of this country and the world. We are all members of the same family and what affects the least of us affects us all. 

This will be my last blog of the year, so adios, peace out and I will talk to you next year. 

Self-Acceptance

Due to events happening in my life, I am becoming acutely aware that my two closest companions are sadness and loneliness. In the past few months I have had some life-altering experiences that have changed my perspective on myself and on how and why I react to certain circumstances the way I do. The events did not alter my life externally, but they caused an earthquake within, which is good. As I have practiced taking a step back and looking within for insight into my reactions, I have been blessed with an awareness and an understanding of what I have been carrying within.  This is when I  began to clearly see the depth of my sadness and loneliness. 

For years, or at least since I have been on this remarkable soul- healing journey, I have pathologized these feelings. It felt natural to classify them as wrong and unhealthy, especially in a society that prizes happiness, feeling good and always "being fine." I have found this  to be true, not only in society in general, but especially in religious and spiritual beliefs. Somehow, there is a misguided belief out there that if you are in relationship with creator energy, all is supposed to be hunky-dorey, pie in the sky for you. I call bullcrap on that.

Thankfully, my understanding of the healing journey is evolving and I am aware of how often I label sadness and loneliness as a sign of something being wrong. I viewed these feelings as harbingers of something being askew, as a message that I needed to be fixed or healed or somehow processed so the feelings could morph into something more positive and acceptable to myself and to the society we live in. I have even questioned whether I maybe needed to raise my vibration so I would not have these feelings. By the way, the answer to that question is a big, resounding NO. The correct answer is to accept and embrace what I become aware of. This process is called "becoming an authentic human being."

What a relief it has been to get to the place of understanding feelings only need to be accepted and embraced. There is nothing wrong with sadness or loneliness. It is okay to feel broken, or down or in doubt. It is okay to stay close to the feelings and open to the place within where the sadness and loneliness dwell. When we have these feelings they are not coming to us from someplace outside of self, they are coming up from within. We already own them. 

When we are willing to quit pretending all is well and allow Self to go beneath the feeling, we can own our true Self and let the healing in.

We are all human, therefore, we all are a conglomeration of feelings, thoughts and insights. We also all walk around with our abandoned feelings stuffed away in deep and dark places within. Modern psychology calls this our shadow self. 

God forbid we should admit to anyone, or anyone would see our sadness or loneliness, or fear, or doubt. Most of us want to show the world a "put together" person, someone who is "fine", fit and able. The last thing we want to admit to self or others is our buried, stuffed way down, doubt and fear, sadness and other emotions. So we pretend we have it all together and we are above it all. 

In reality, those feelings we work so hard to keep hidden, do show up and they usually appear in ways we don't like. They tend to show up as impatience, jealousy, rage, extreme control and through the need to shame and blame someone else for what we feel. 

All feelings are a gift waiting to be opened and acknowledged, so once we see it, we can begin to embrace it as the opportunity it is, which is a chance to love our Self in our entirety. A chance to embrace what we considered  unembraceable and to give it warmth and acceptance. When we get to this place, life is easier because we no longer have to wrestle with our unacceptable feelings. We can just acknowledge them and be at peace.

In doing this I have gotten very clear that the feeling of loneliness is not to be confused with the reality of aloneness. They are nothing alike, in fact they are not even related. I can be alone and not lonely and I can be in a crowd and be lonely. I like being alone. I actually covet quiet and solitude. Loneliness is different in that it is about separation and includes the expression of longing. For me, this translates to the longing to return to my true self, to the entirety of who I am. I believe many of us long for wholeness, for authenticity, for the ease of being who we are, without having to pretend to be who we think we are supposed to be. 

Christmas is near and in the spirit of giving I have made a conscious decision to continue to give myself to myself. This is a gift no one can give me, it has to come from within. Self-acceptance, self-kindness and transformation is our birthright and is there for the taking.

This holiday season, I hope we all make a decision to give ourselves the greatest gift of all, which is Self-love and acceptance.  May your holidays be truly happy and filled with peace and love.