Yes, here is good

You know the feeling of getting dropped off by someone for the first time? They don’t know where they’re going and they don’t fully comprehend what your “home” looks like, much less what it means to you. Eventually you will have to speak up and tell them where to stop with something along the lines of “here is good”… But the truth is, it’s not always “good”. It really depends on what you’re coming home to and what kind of home you’ve been building for yourself. Home can be a reckoning, a refuge, or a mix of both. December 30th and 31st always feel like that to me.

Another year is coming to an end. It’s a natural time for the whole world to stop and reflect on the homes we have been building for ourselves over the past year. I used to use the winter holiday season to think about the highs and lows of the year. Naming what I succeeded in learning, what I still had to work on, what I had accomplished and what proof I had to offer to others that I was indeed more valuable than before, if at all. I’d also think about relationships with family, friends, and colleagues, and what started out as gratitude would quickly shift into a worry that I had nothing to show for any of it. Relationships are intangible and can’t be quantified by a score out of 100, money, titles, or any amount of material things. This inability to measure success always created a pressure to do better. Somehow, I’m supposed to earn more love, earn more trust, and be more creative to find new way so that by the time I’m dropped off at my front door next year, I don’t have to feel disappointed and like I’ve somehow failed because I had nothing to show for all my effort. I figured maybe if I could figure out a way to insert myself into peoples lives so that their success is inextricably linked with my presence in their lives then their successes, their awards, accolades, career growth, and measurable outcomes can be my trophies too. Maybe if I could just tangle myself into a knot that is so interconnected and complex it becomes impossible to separate, then I could rely on that enmeshment to believe in my relationships and an unconditional bond. Pathetic, I know, but my codependency was all I knew so end of year reflections always felt tied to a rush of self-judgement. That is, before 2021. This year the moment hit different.

Despite another year of Covid and spending most of the year locked in with my very small bubble of humans, I focused on paying attention to opportunities that felt life-giving. I spent most of my year figuring out what the heck it even means to feel alive on my own terms. I learned that actually living means I need to know what I care about in order to honour the things that actually matter. I need to know what I want in order to actually say “hell yes” to the right things or to say “no thanks” to things that feel less than completely right for me. I learned to say “no thank you”, and am still working on “no” as a complete sentence. This year I learned boundaries — not as a way to exclude others, but as a way to take responsibility for the things I need and want in my life and to make sure those things are always met. Then, from that whole and unconditional place, I could actually be a gift of time, energy, care, or love, with no expectation that my gifts are repaid in some other person’s equivalent value. I learned I do not have to earn my value and that I matter simply because exist and I say so. It has been terrifying, confronting, freeing, healing, and incredibly rewarding to live a much simpler life filled with just a few solid people, places, and things that make each day feel like one solid hell f*cking yes, rather than a whole 365 days of “I don’t knows” and “maybes”.

At the “here is good” moment of 2021, I’m stepping out of the car and opening the door to a gentle breeze that can only come from a year well lived. I claimed my life on my terms, I showed up the way that honoured my values, and owned my responsibility of ensuring all my needs are met. I still have a lot more growing and becoming to do, but every moment is just another opportunity to honour the things that make my life worth living — because I know what’s important to me. For the first time. I’m being dropped off at the end of another adventurous year and I’m excited to get out of the car, rest, and hop into 2022… because I might not know where I’m going, but I can guarantee I’ll make sure it’s a heckin’ good time.