Trigger warning: this post talks about losing a loved one and living after loss.
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
As we head into 2025, our regular greeting is "Happy New Year!" It's a common phrase that wishes well and acknowledges the start of a new season.
New Year is associated with the ending of one year and the start of a new year. It's a natural opportunity to leave the past behind and to look forward with hope for greater possibilities in the coming year.
It can be a chance to set new goals or resolutions and to evaluate our life choices, our relationships, and our goals and direction.
New Year is often a time when people choose a word of reflection for the coming year or reflect on a word that summarizes the previous year.
All of these opportunities for reflection can be helpful as we continue to grow.
At the same time, this year the thought that has been sitting with me is actually one of uncertainty. The new year is filled with possibility, but not everything will necessarily be wonderful.
I often find that when we experience significant loss in our lives, it can change how we see life. For myself, I have found that it means I live with the constant awareness that I could lose someone who matters to me and that, in a moment, my life could be very different than I hope or plan.
However, having had a number of significant losses (previous blog post about loss can be found here), I have also learned that I don't want the loss to define the rest of my life. Somehow, even in the midst of great loss and change, I want to find a way to keep living life fully. By living life fully, I honour those I've lost, I love and show compassion towards myself, and I acknowledge the value and significance of the living who are present in my life.
Part of the work of grieving is finding ways to live fully with the presence of loss in our life.
What I have learned about heading into a new year is:
• Make plans, and be prepared that they might change
• Have hope, because hope is life giving and significant, but also recognize that hope is not a blind guarantee, but rather an attitude
• Treasure the moments you can, even when they are not perfect
• Comparison hurts more than it helps and can often leave us feeling hemmed in and stuck
• Extend kindness without judgement, to yourself and others
• Accept that emotions are neither bad nor good - they are simply indicators of our internal experience and worlds; approach emotions with curiousity
• Speak freely the things you need to say, the "I love you", the words of appreciation, the things you want your loved ones to know
Live life with the knowledge that things can change in a heartbeat and with the intentionality that strives to have significance and hope in the present moment. For in that tension, I believe, we live fully, or as my kids like to say "live our best life".
So as I wish you Happy New Year, I wish for you possibly, growth, change, and happy anticipation. And I wish for you a life lived with presence and intentionality - aware of reality, but not held hostage by the fear of the unknown; hopeful, but not unaware; being fully present for yourself and those you love.
~ Haide
Comments