Day 365

December 31, 2022

Happy Birthday Madeline Whiton

My farewell after 2 years.

I received 3 prompts this morning.  Two of them were from my friend Dina and were basically what supports your resilience and what are you holding space for in 2023?  Then the prompt from Two Sylvias was about writing a poem looking back at the year.

So I went to the rookery where it was 42 degrees at 10:30 this morning and very very calm with the beginnings of major fog.  There I sat and wrote for a while on my 2022.

This really was a major year for me.  I left off the other day with the 50 year anniversary of my fathers death and the production of my Birthmother play.  It was so difficult to claim the work that that play represented.  It was quite the event and because I did it with community it was doable.  

It also established the need to articulate the next tier of my journey and that is where I started this morning.  

Another milestone of 2022 is my claiming and honoring my diabetes after 10 years of trying to ward it off and watching my health dissolve I finally decided to work with it and own it.  That made the beginning of the year harder.  But so rewarding.  In the next 4 months I watched my health turn  around.  By August my blood work was almost perfect. In October I had the energy to take on 5 mornings a week in the pool.  I have no idea how much weight I've lost, I never wanted to make any of this about my weight, but my energy level and my stamina is 10 fold.

It's interesting because in May I got really sick which made me stop for almost the entire month and take inventory.  It made me own what I had done thus far.  My doctor of 40 years retired in the middle of this health journey.  She left in May, I had to stop.  Of course I had to get sick.  Heaven forbid I just pull into myself a little, no I get an infection.  Oh somethings are so predictable. 

On the other end of the sickness I got to rebuild a routine which I really like.  I have such great people and great activities in my everyday life.  I'm so impressed.

During the summer I got to really look at that, too.  I got to see people I don't get to see often and spend real time with them.  I got to reengage some old friendships, people I have truly loved in my life who are now back in it.

I watched EJ take hold of their own life and to advocate seriously for what they needed to be stable.  I watched them work for their own stability and health and to go back to college and follow their passion.  It was so impressive.  I am so proud of them.  Their journey made many of us habe to face our own biases and the places where our own hearts are stunted,  they made us open our hearts and minds.

Patrick lived here for 5 months and I got to remember what it is like to share space with another human.  It made me wrestle with the concepts of self care and selfishness and to see where they might look alike but are very different.

I got to reengage with family in whole new ways.  Grace and Jake came to visit for a couple of weeks.  I saw Marg and Nate a few times during the year because they came to visit their wonderful granddaughter.   I visited Maine and got to hang out with Paul and Molly.  And Sarah came to visit a few times during the year. Karen and Ember have been a solid support, one I know is not too far away.  And Mike and I formed a new way to have a long distance sibling relationship.  I miss Jason so much.  

And the hardest one to face is Barbie's cancer and death.  I will have to continue to reflect on that.  Grief is terribly hard.  

So much made me spend more time exploring and investigating addiction and the interactions between mental health issues and addictions.  I had to look at the role its played in my life, both my addictions and those around me, beginning with my Father's early death 50 years ago.

What triggers addiction? Or what triggers psyche instability?  What is the balance between genetics and experience of trauma?  When does substance abuse start to be a self medication or a self controlling strategy that goes bad so quickly?

For those of us genetically susceptible to addiction how much can we withstand before we get caught up in our own physiological spider webs?  I have watched many struggle with their addictions this year, a few lost the struggle and a few are still with us because of the grace of a God.  And a few have stopped before it is too ugly.  Hug to them all.  I love you.  I get it.  I struggle with the balance daily.

Accomplishments: there have been so many, but I just want to scream out, My play and a poem in Silkworm 15, Yay me. And I want to claim Writers Read which has offered people another venue for reading to a good audience.

I also have become aware of myself as a person who takes on too many projects, thus, not completing many.  This is clearest with the house.   I am drowning in photos, poems and signs of love.  Could be worse.

I'm very excited about 2023.  I'll write more on that tomorrow.  Right now I'd just like to answer the question about what I want to hold space for.  I want to continue to hold space for my bird exploring and my nature photos.  But I want to add to that a practice of rituals and honoring them.  I want to claim my Pagan roots and wonder what my ancestors did before Christianity and Catholicism got in the way.  I want to hold space for ritual community activity.  I want to hold closer those who love me and those I love.  I want to bring people together for the sake of loving their worlds, their earth, their friends.  I am going to start this year.

So don't be disappointed that I'm stopping this.  It just means I am making room to complete some of the other things I have been trying to do, like my small square book on identifying pronouns.   They will appear, you will see signs of completion and many of you will gather at my rituals.  

Thank you for reading for the past two years.  Some of you I know and others I don't, but I appreciate everyone's attention.  It has been a successful tool for me to use in my journey.

Stay well.  Be kind and grateful for what you do have. 

with love...

The last thing i want to say is 50 years ago today I had no idea how I was going to survive the pain in my heart.  Tonight I know how I did and I feel good about how much I did do with those 50 years and that pain.