I entered the new year actually staying awake and celebrating with my daughter, my husband and his brother (who is staying with us a while to help out while I’m down from surgery). I’ve fallen asleep at least two hours before the ball drop for the last several years. I am not a night owl, nor a morning person. I am a 10a-8p kind of functioning human. Last year I spoke of a shift in my spirit and body and was ready for a year full of hope and emotional, spiritual healing. I was tired of consistent hardships, exhaustion, disappointment, and honestly depression. I did not know my daughter and I would both suffer health crises in 2023, but it didn’t derail my sense of hope and peace, and feelings of joy amidst the struggle. Did I cry? Yes. Did I question all that is good and holy? Yes. Did I get angry and feel helpless? Yes. All of those true and valid things, I experienced. I also experienced, in the depths of my soul, a peace and strength that only the healing journey I was on could bring.
This year, 5 days into 2024, I’ve been trying to think of hopes and goals I would like to manifest and accomplish. Obviously, continuing healing is at the forefront. I spent the last half of 2023 learning of a cancer diagnosis, meeting a number of doctors and specialists, having to make really hard decisions about my future and it all still feels like a whirlwind. I made the best decision for myself and my family and for that I am grateful. I have not had time to even process that I had cancer, much less that I enter 2024 cancer free (post surgery). I want to be intentional in reflecting and sitting with all that has happened the last 7 months in my own being. I feel I have only just digested all that happened with my daughter and her continued progress. I believe that sitting with, processing, digesting and integrating my own cancer journey and healing will help me to better serve those I care for and those I love. The care, support and love that I received from family, friends and colleagues I will never be able to put into words. It’s been incredibly humbling and deeply touching.
I hope to go back to work the first of February with a renewed mind and spirit, but my struggle will be not throwing myself all in and burning out quickly. This has been my pattern. I worry about building back up my PTO and taking extra shifts in order to do that. My goal is to focus on what I can do, need to do and not on building up for the just in case. I have realized how I exhaust myself just in the planning and preparing for what may or may not come. My focus will be to constantly remind myself to take each day as it comes, meet the need for that day, and let that be enough. I’m tired of being the hero and I need to focus on being enough for what is needed. (I was reminded of that today from a colleague who knows my patterns.) I also want to remember to check in with myself throughout the day to see how I’m doing on the inside (mind, body, and spirit) and honor where I am in the moment at that time. Taking breaks and pauses has become important for me just in my healing journey physically. My body informs me well if I will only listen to it. I commit to do (sufficient and well) but not overdo this year.
I want to continue to be present at home. I have worked really hard to be intentional and engaged with my daughter and husband in the last year. Our relationships have grown deeper, more loving and I felt myself want to be home and take care of my home. Work is not my surrogate home anymore. It can’t be, and I will work not to let it become that again. Lessons from a workaholic, a systemic family pattern I am focused on breaking. With Lola also, I want to keep up my daily-ish walks and eventually, when my body is healed enough, daily-ish runs. Physical exertion is my therapy and it’s necessary in the work that I do. I need it to thrive and remembering this is important. Also boundaries have become so key to my mental health (with family). Shifting in seeing them as barriers, I see them as things that keep me sane and my immediate family healthy. This has been tremendous. I’ve learned in only the two weeks I’ve been recovering how important a little alone time has been also. Naming my needs- monumental.
I will continue with leading the book club for women’s ministry and being a leader within. I have seen how essential this community has become for my spirit and the relationships I have built and want to continue to cultivate this year. This ministry is made up of women who fall on the fundamentally conservative to progressive moderate to liberal (myself) spectrum. I have selfishly thought open-minded meant the conservatives opening to the ideas, understandings and loving those very different than themselves, those more progressive and liberal. What I have found in myself is when I opened my mind and heart, I began to listen and understand those that hold more conservative values and faith beliefs. With intention and growing awareness, I open my heart to loving them and being in community with them. I don’t have to agree with someone to love them and be in relationship with them. As long as we both are open to each other relationship will happen because love is there. My heart and my spirit have become incredibly full with the women of my church. I honestly never thought I’d find home or community there but it was because I viewed them as other and not as a part of my and the collective whole. I have found a spiritual healing and wholeness in the last year through my faith community that I had been thinking was on the outside only.
I want to also focus more on my physical health. I’m aware of my love/hate relationship with sugar. Under stress I eat copious amounts of sweets and when I’m bored. I want to cultivate a healthy relationship with sugar whatever that may be and eat more seasonally with more vegetables and fruits. I also want to continue to keep my gluten intolerance in the forefront of my health also. This will be a big goal for 2024. These are a few of the reflections the beginning of this year has brought. I know more will come. I want this year to be reflective, full of continuous growth and awareness, health (for my mind, body and spirit) and healing.
The Journey Home 