she writes on sundays

Why: not for now, but later.

February 20th, 2017

A while back I wrote a blog “to the tiny human makers” it was a spin off of a conversation my work wife and I had about how much we really love our kiddos and how much we want the parents to know that.Lately though I’ve been thinking about why I work with kids. And I hate to say it, but it’s not because they are kids.

It’s because they are people, albeit tiny ones.

I have a desire in me to help people. To give them tools, hope, encouragement.

I’ve always been a background person. I want to help the process along. I want to push others forward. I want to help them come into who they are.

I want to give them things right now that they will need for later.

This doesn’t always make what I do easy.

There is limited instant gratification (except potty training-the instant that happens? Hallelujah) but I know that I’m putting something in the kids that I have interacted with that they will, somewhere along the way, just have grafted in themselves.

I’ve been lucky to have moments where I see where a day camper grow into a beautiful adult. I’ve gotten to see one of my RFK grow into a beautiful teen staff. I have gotten to see the personality of my preschoolers evolve over their parents social media.

And that’s wonderful.

But I won’t always know what happens.

A lot of the kids I work with on a daily basis I won’t ever know. I won’t know the kind of teenagers they become, what colleges they choose to go to or what kind of adults they turn out to be.

I can only hope and pray that the bits and pieces of things we have established in them stay in them.

I work with people ,whether of the tiny human variety or not, is because I want to show them who I am so that they are able to be more fully themselves. I want to speak out and use my voice so others find theirs.

I want to give them things I learned in my yesterday, today, for all of their tomorrows.

That’s my hope and desire not only each day with the kiddos but with any human with whom I cross paths.

So, what’s my why after 400 words? What’s my bottom line of why I do what I do?

I do what I do, and I am who I am on a daily basis because I want you to know a little more of who you are than you did yesterday. I want you to realize how wonderful you are. How valued and needed and loved you are.

I want you to know you have something to give from inside of you.

My why is to spur you on to find your own.
what the snow taught me.

February 12th, 2017

The snow was incredibly discombobulating. It was stressful. It was in no way, shape or form an easy low week. It wasn’t restful. It was full of questions and worry.I am trying to figure out how something so peaceful was full of anything but peace.

The snow caused me to feel a little lost.

One of the days that I was walking to and from work I was being very careful not to step where someone else had walked. Walking in fresh powder is one thing. Walking where one or two people have walked is fine too.

But once all the people have trudged down a path and compacted the snow and turned it into an ice rink, the worst life choice you can make is to walk where someone else has walked.

That’s where we fall.

I only fell once last week and it didn’t even have anything to do with the snow (I blame Trevor).

But that fall caused me to walk with even more timidity and care. It caused me to be cautious of all of my movements. Even holding my tiny humans seemed like more work than normal.

I learned something in all of my steps through the snow this week.

I needed to trudge my own path.

There were days when I could hop on those only slightly walked on paths, but as the week got further in I had to find the spots where no one had walk. Or the spots where people had given the sidewalk a fresh start and there was no longer ice.

Have you ever reached a fork in the road and had to come to terms with the fact that you didn’t want to choose either path?

It’s funny because I actually don’t know what’s down either road–I just know I don’t want to go down them.

I’m heading just off the path.

But currently my feet are pretty much cemented to the ground.

And I have no clue what to do.

I was, I think I still am, incredibly hopeful for this year. I think that I am going to make some big, life changing decisions this year. I feel the change in my bones. I feel as if I am about to trod my own path.

And that slightly scares me.

I remember a very real conversation I had with myself back in college. It was in the year after Joe died and I was very much still mad at God. I was lost. But I decided I wasn’t going to wait for someone else to be who I was anymore. I had met this human who made me laugh and feel cherished and loved. And I hadn’t gotten him for long enough to see what could have been.

I knew in that moment I had to walk my own path.

I feel that lost feeling again.

Like I am living the life I am supposed to be, not the life I could be.

This isn’t bad people. It’s ok. It’s this edge my seat antsy-ness that will propel me into new.

I just don’t know what it is.

Have you been there? At that place where you know in your knower that change is on the horizon. And you are waiting for it with bated breath.

I’m right there too. Walking towards the horizon to see if it will get closer.

Because we can’t really pause waiting for change.

I would love too. I’d love to take a week and sit at a cabin and stare at water. I’d love to go to a foreign country for a month. I would love to stop showing up.

But I hate to tell you this, the change won’t come if you stop moving.

That’s what I’ve come to realize. It’s like in a video game-you physically can’t get to the end of a level if you stop. Eventually the monster or the villain will walk up to you and eat you. But, if you move forward, you can collect things that help you finish the level and vanquish the monster.

So, I am going to keep moving. I am going to collect tokens along the way. I’m going to be hopeful. I am going to put myself forward in each day.

I’m just a little lost.

And that’s ok.
Bookmark the positive

February 2nd, 2017

I can tell you the month and the year (if not the date) of every tragic, hard thing that has happened in my life. I can tell you where I was, what I was doing. I can tell you the emotion I felt prior to the other shoe dropping.
I think that’s sad.
It is also slightly the world we live in.

Even in my job. I rarely hear amazing things before 8 in the morning. It’s mainly a run down of bad things, a run down of things that might make the day harder, a run down of things I did wrong yesterday, a rundown of who won’t be there.

We don’t stop for the positive.

Sure, we celebrate anniversaries and birthdays. We honor achievement. We lift up notable advancements.

But, what would happen if, as often as we said “that was a long week” or “today, was such a Thursday” if we also said, “Today was kick ass!”

If you haven’t noticed, for me, 2017 is about adding positive words in the atmosphere.

Because I sucked at it last year.

Now, I am not saying this is a rose-colored glasses situation. Because there will be hard days and long weeks and tragic moments and unspeakable things occurring in our world. I am not even saying to “find the positive”, even though that’s great.

I’m deciding, that when it’s a good day, I am going to say just that.

So….

Today was a great day.

The sun was shining, the kids were in great moods. We went on a long walk and made people smile. I didn’t get slapped. The kids slept for a long time. We took silly pictures while we made no bake cookies. I went and said hi to the smiley babies. I had a beautiful conversation with some grandparents who thanked me for taking care of their grand baby. I laughed in the office and was productive when I needed to be.

And then my work wife got off early and we got to hang out. And not just an out of exhaustion need someone to lean on but a happy, lighthearted afternoon.

Today was a great day.

And maybe, a year or two from now, I will see this post on my time hop and I will remember the feeling before the great day started. Maybe February 2nd will be this day I remember from now on.

Or maybe it won’t be.

And I know, that I will probably still bookmark the tragic. It will just happen. Because most tragic is also a remembrance of what was and what is about to be.

But, I do know, that I am going to make room for good days. I am going to make room in my life and in my vocabulary.

Let’s choose to bookmark the positive. To dogear that page so we can remember the feeling and the actual-not-from-exhaustion but joyful laughter.

Today was a good day.

I didn’t even have to use my AK.
PS and as a favor can we all please agree to let frozen go away and please play this song on repeat.
You can call me Meghan if you want.

January 22nd, 2017

I go by Meg for the most part these days. Anyone that has met me in the last three years knows me as Meg, so for the most part I get called Meg (or teacher meeegggggg).
Today, I was in the grocery store and I heard “Hey Meghan!” and I quickly looked up. It was weird the knee jerk reaction that I don’t always have. I’m around other Meghan’s so I usually don’t respond. The person who said hi was thankfully someone I knew–a friend from high school who also randomly lives up here. I said hi and smiled and continued on.

Tonight, after taking all afternoon to clean and rearrange my room for something fresh, I sat here typing and deleting and typing more and deleting more.

Nothing fit, nothing flowed.

Because I get frustrated with rehashing old wounds, old dilemmas, old thoughts.

Because we are 3 weeks out of 2016 and I am working so hard to be hopeful and find truth for myself.

I am desperately desiring there to be no spillover.

I was called Meghan for the first 27 years of my life. I was rarely called anything different (except Moses but that’s another story). I still am called Meghan by anyone who knew me before 2013.

I started being called Meg solely because it was what my name on Facebook was when I went on the world race. And it just kind of stuck. It’s followed me ever since. And I like it. It marks multiple things. People who still call me Meghan are those who have been with me. Those who have stuck by me and I them. People who call me Meg either walked with me through the transformation or are currently still growing with me.

It’s a beautiful bookmark.

But today?

Hearing Meghan caused me to feel a lot of things.

I felt ugly.

I felt spillover.

I felt silenced by anxiety that probably wasn’t even mine.

I don’t like to deal with things I’ve already dealt with.

I’m currently in a battle with still typing versus deleted the 350 words currently on the page.

But I’m not.

Why?

Because there are a lot of things and feelings and issues all around us that are causing a lot of stuff in the atmosphere. It’s stuffing the air with fear and anxiety and that’s not what I want my air filled with.

Part of being kind to myself this year is to attempt rid myself of things bottled up inside. Be it to friends, or to some blank pages or even to this blog.

I have hidden anxieties and parts of my story still drenched in shame that I want to lay to rest this year. I truly believe they are covering beautiful parts of myself I don’t even realize exist.

I think part of being kind to ourselves is coming to terms with, coming to grips with, and coming face to face with things we still deem ugly.

None of those ugly things are your identity. Yes, they might have strengthened part of who you are but they aren’t you. We are not what we lack. We are the lovely parts. We are the strengths which are beautified by what we deem as weakness.

I’m going to attempt to detoxify myself of things I deem ugly, in an attempt to realize how much more beautiful they have made me.

Bottom line: Let’s be kind to our stories my friends.
To those I love in Bellingham: a letter

January 14th, 2017

Today, for the first time in I couldn’t tell you how long, I left my house on a Saturday. Not to go somewhere or do errands or meet someone, I left my house with my ipad and journal to go sit at a coffee shop.And I was walking in the crisp, bright, winter air I looked at the downtown skyline which has become one of my favorite views- the mountains created a back drop to the herald sign, the red museum creating a stark contrast to the blue skies. Beauty in unexpected things. It reminds me of the beauty I found in Beira, Mozambique when we had to live in the city, or the beauty of the hustle and bustle of Bangkok. Finding beauty where your feet are.

But, as I was contemplating that I was hit with a thought that welled up some tears in my eyes and caused my heart to race. So here it is:

To my people in Bellingham:

Growing up,my mother’s kitchen table always had Diet Coke, at least two remotes, some form of baked good and a hodgepodge of people. The doorway of our house was crossed by humans from lots of different walks of life, ages, journeys, people in the highs and lows.

It’s part of the reason why I love inviting people over and meeting people where they are at. And I think it’s why I’ve always had and been comfortable in so many different groups of people. And why I am friends with a handful of people I’ve never actual met or have only known in person one or two weeks of my life.

But I believe I can say, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you people, those I interact with on AT LEAST a weekly basis (if not daily) here in Bellingham are the most eclectic group of humans I’ve ever encountered.

And man do I love you guys.

And what’s funny is that I only interact with people here that are somehow connected to one of two places: The Y or A Life. My job and my church.

But what a difference it’s made.

The realization I had, the thing that finally hit my heart even though the knowledge has always been there, even though it’s a truth I love to remind people of, is that knowing all of you guys, specifically in this time in my life has caused me to know more of who I am then I ever thought possible.

As I said, that tidbit was in my brain, the knowledge was there. Every conversation, interactions, the laughter, the tears, all those things stored together from people have been building blocks. It’s normally not something you truly realize until you are in a high emotions situation or a situation when you are around the same people day in and out where you begin to realize bits and pieces of yourself through them.

You guys have been the most wonderful piece of self discovery.

Because of everyone of you I’ve not only learned more of who I am, but more of who I want to be.

And I believe every time I said I wanted to run it was because all of the things I was learning and feeling and desiring were becoming far too big for the life I had been living. All the ugly surfacing were dreams and desires and hopes I had buried long ago for fear of getting hurt.

Before I moved here, I would, here and there, struggle with comparison and jealousy and loneliness and lack of identity, but the last year and a half all of those things have been stirred up, multiplied and fleshed out.

And that has made me want to run.

But not you guys.

Everyone of you has kept my feet planted.

Because I think, I believe, I know, that there are aspects in each and everyone of you that have caused me to want more, desire more, be more.

That all became too big for my heart.

You guys believed in me when I didn’t think I had anything to believe in.

You chose more for me when I thought I was done with more.

What a beautiful thing.

And it causes me to think of the people I had and still very much have before here, that encouraged me to get to this place, and the people before that and that.

My life journey is filled with people. Beautiful, lovely, whimsical human beings from all places and countries and backgrounds.

My desire in life is to be so wholly myself that it causes others to see more of who they are.

And Bellingham has been a shocking, surprising, not always welcome huge step towards this very thing.

Bellingfamily and Yfamily and all those connected to the two, I need you to know that I’ve never wanted to run from you. I’ve wanted to run from the life that was getting too beautifully big for the box I had. I wanted to run from the emotions that all of that was bringing up that I’d gotten supremely used to ignoring.

But you? Never you.

PS

Find people. Find multiple groups of people. Find people you agree with. Find people you disagree with. People who live life differently then you and those who walk the same road. Find people who worship the same and find those who believe differently. Sit across tables from them, break bread them, clink glasses with them. Laugh with them.

And learn, even if it’s just for a night.

Learn who they are, where they come from, how they make a sandwich.

And when you wake up, I guarantee you will have found more of yourself.

In the similarities, the differences and the universal truths.

Let’s choose, daily, to bring the people around us to more of who they are.
in 2017 i met the wind again

January 1st, 2017

After the clock stuck twelve last night I slipped out of the warm house that was filled with a group of humans I’ve grown to like a lot. I slipped out barefooted in my sparkly gold dress with a glass of champagne and I sat on the edge of the porch with my feet up listening to the ruckus around me on the university street I live on and I watched the snow fall silently to the ground.

And I wept.
That’s the only way I can describe what occurred. Weeping.

I wept for things lost and moments gone. I wept for joy that was taken. I wept for my aching heart.

I also wept for the beauty. Beauty of marriages and babies and friendships formed. I wept for the love I feel and the love I’ve been given.

And then two of the most important women in my life this year, Patty & Joanna, popped out to hug me. And we had a moment reminiscing on where we’ve been, what we’ve done and how we got here.

Then we went inside to finish celebrating and laughing and starting 2017 off with a bang.

And then, today, the wind came.

It met us after church. It was howling and sweeping around not yet melted snow. And it kept coming.

As I’ve sat in my front room attempting to rest and gear up for another week, the wind has knocked on my door on multiple occasions, it’s rustling the barren trees and moving around the bits of trash left over from a night of people reveling.

The wind met me, a little over 3 years ago, on a dirt road in Swaziland. Out of absolute stillness the wind came. In that moment it came to knock down walls in my life. The wind met me again in Spain. It was destructive, and calming and aggressive. It uprooted and plowed through me.

Today, the wind met me in 2017 to uncover.

I had a dream two nights ago, which is rare for me, and as I talked it through with a friend I realized it was full of significance for myself. In part of the dream we were restoring this beautiful estate. We were moving mounds of dirt that had piled up over these beautiful porches and patios and gathering areas. And then we gathered and celebrated in the beauty we had uncovered.

I’ve always known that the wind comes to uncover what was already there. What’s been there.

You just have to choose to clean up the mess that it moved.

Who knows what 2017 holds. I may or may not find that guy, I may have more unsuccessful days at work, the two year olds might do me in, I might feel lonely or sad.

But the wind came today.

The wind came and it moved all the crap and dirt and pain that 2016 left in its wake. It moved all of it to show the beauty that 2016 left. The beauty and the loveliness that has always been there.

I’m going to let the wind keep uncovering the beauty and truth in my life in 2017. I am going to create more, I’m going to hone my baking skills, I am going to write.
I am going to sing.

The wind brought me hope today, that I forgot I was capable of having.
2016: the last word pt2

December 31st, 2016

Here goes nothing.

I just went back and read my words prior to 2016. And the final line of that blog was “here’s to a new year with space for all the things.”

I just wrote four or five lines on how this statement wasn’t true. But I deleted them because I realized that this year did indeed have all the things. Meaning there was space for them.

There just wasn’t space for anything else.

I wrote in part one how I cried a lot this year. Painful, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking sobs.

But, because most things in my life in one way or another relate back to tiny humans as this last week has been me in a state of exhaustion I began thinking about this fact that’s always in the back of brain especially in regards to the tiny humans that take a little bit more of my teacher Meg voice.

For every negative that is spoken over a human (no!, that wasn’t a good choice, redirecting, or even stepping into help with a direction) you need 5 positives to balance it out. And actually, at the end of the day most need ten. We have an average of about 20,000 interactions a day. And how many of those are positive or negative.

This is where I feel we get hit.

This is where I feel I get hit.

Partly because if I’m being honest , I am not the first to speak positive things to myself. Not neccesarily that I speak negatively to myself, but I don’t counteract the outside world.

I also am not the greatest at receiving the words or big acts from people.

It’s not like I had many people being mean to me left and right this year. But I had a lot of being second choice, I had people physically showing me they did not want to be in my life, I had a lot of the life around me telling me I wasn’t enough, or that I was needed not wanted and I had people that showed they didn’t respect the kids I loved so dearly to just show the eff up. (Ex. The dark times in T1. Shout out here to: Katy and Krys for always being there, Jamie for always being encouraging, elizabeth for looks through the window, Victoria for always showing up early and Patty for always having wine)

So, as I’ve come to the end of this year I feel I can say that this as a sum up of all the things:

2016 was a full fledge attack on my identity.

It was a year that told me time after time after time that I wasn’t enough, or good enough, or first choice, or wanted. It was a year that told me to just give up. It was year that tried to strip the joy away from things in my life that are good and lovely.

But you know what? There is something, deep ingrained in me, that tells me that the lovely and good are still there. And for as much as I will be the first to say that I battled things in this year that I thought were long passed-insecurities, and ghosts and anxiety I will also say but.

Because the people.

Because the people in my life had so many lovely, celebratory things happen in their life and they invited me along for the ride. Because the people in my life had hard, hard times and they invited me to grieve with them. Because the people in my life put their arm around my shoulder when I had no words for what I needed. Because for as many times as I told the people in my life that they weren’t crazy and it was ok they said the same thing back.

If this year has taught me anything or really reiterated a lesson I already knew, it’s that I do better, I’m more myself because of the people around me.

And on the days when the lives of the people around me cause me to see what I’m lacking, I have to choose to remember that without them I’d be lacking and vice versa.

So yes, I have absolutely no problem saying this year will not go down as a favorite.

But I will say that I learned to celebrate small things and REALLY celebrate the joyous beautiful things.

I will say I learned to choose my battles. And to stand my ground.

I will say learned to say no (more than the year prior)

I will say I fell more deeply in love with the people in my life.

Because without them, what’s really the point?

So 2016, I bid you a gigantic peace out. I thank you for the tears from laughter, for the margaritas on Tuesday, the champagne on Sundays, for a dozen cheesecakes and tables teeming with people.

But like, please let the door hit you on the way out.

2017, let’s choose champagne.
Not the last word pt1

December 28th, 2016

We’ve reached the point in the end of the world/natural disaster/plane crash on a deserted island movie where the survivors are about to see the sunlight for the first time. They are bracing themselves. They know that the outside is still there because they can hear the wind and see scattered light in the midst of the caves of wreckage they find themselves under, but like what if there are zombies waiting, or people with huge guns, or worse: zombies with huge guns.

What if what’s outside the wreckage is just as bad as being piled under it?

Or as per Jamie…what if we can’t breathe out there?

Now, pardon my French, but for the most part, 2016 has been a shitshow.

And even though I almost feel like I can use a royal WE in this blog (which Patty knows I only ever use with permission) I won’t use it. I will say that there are people in my life who have been in the trenches with me in this year. People around me who the same year as I did. People who were exhausted all the time. People who shook their fist unable to figure it out.

I think I’ve cried more this year than I have ever cried. I ugly cried this year. I hurt in ways I didn’t think possible. I was gut wrenchingly lonely amidst some of the best people I’ve ever known. I battled depression so much that I collapsed on my bed most Fridays. I was numb by the end of each week, from busyness, heartache, loneliness, anxiety and sheer exhaustion.

The need to run was maybe the highest I’ve ever felt. It lit my nerves on fire. Wanting to leave these place, these people, this home of mine. Because it was staying. And it was hard.

I questioned most of my actions. I questioned my okayness. I questioned being a broken record. I questioned my fineness. I questioned people wanting to be around me.

And also, again, it bears repeating, I cried.

I sobbed in the office at work multiple times in the first half of the year (less the second half-not none, just less). I sobbed in front of Patty. I sobbed on the garage floor with Joanna and Patrick. I sobbed in silence on my bed more times than I want to admit. I cried tears for my aunt Ann. I sobbed in airports and in Tiffany’s car. I cried in restaurants and bars. I cried at church. I cried to Glenalyn as I walked through back roads of Bellingham. I cried at NMC after camp, regretting not buying contacts just so I could wear sunglasses.

I cried more tears than I ever have in my life.

Something in me was reacting to everything around me. Some force outside of myself was telling me to fold. To wave the white flag.

And sometimes I did. If I’m being honest, sometimes I didn’t show up when I knew I needed too or I left early when I just couldn’t take it. Sometimes I didn’t push through.

{and here it is folks}

BUT

There is a reason why this is a two part blog.

For every time I cried, I probably laughed.

Even it was from the absurdity of life or the horrors or that span of life in T1 where teacher Meg got off the grace train and never got back on.

For every time life tried to kick me in the face, there was a reason to celebrate, even if it was just getting through another week of ypocalypse or ya know, all the weddings and babies.

This year has been hell. It’s been pain. It’s been heartache.

But that’s not going to be my last sentence.

Part two is filed with the loveliness I wasn’t always able to see. Or I was too exhausted to talk about. Or was in the midst of planning

Part two gets the last word.

So, watch this space.

And find your own last word on the end of this chapter of your life.
people gathered

December 25th, 2016

For the last few years, I’ve taken a moment to write some Christmas thoughts, to ponder, to wonder.Yesterday was full and lovely without a moment to sit and write.

And that was 100% ok with me.

Yesterday started before my alarm went off. I was cooking sausage and kneading dough before 9. I was sipping mimosas out of a coffee cup with people I am so grateful to have in my life before 10:30, I had sufficiently fed 8 people before noon and we had played a round of cards against humanity before 2.

By 5 I had spent an hour singing Christmas carols in preparation for Christmas Eve and baked and bagged 200 cookies. By 6:30 I was huddled in the snow with about thirty people singing Silent Night with candles lit. By 9 I was curled up on couches at my neighbors drinking and laughing and watching Star Wars for the first time.

And by midnight I was asleep.

Even now just writing it I have to smile.

Because if I am being honest, being a single adult, who lives away from her family, holidays feel tricky. You lack traditions you grew up with, you lack a person to share them with, you lack kids to buy presents for.

The holidays can very much give us a picture of what we lack. Money, spouses, gifts, love, kids. They can remind of us people who are no longer there. They can remind us of what we’ve lost.

They can do all of those things, unless we choose to not allow them too.

I could have been a recluse this weekend. I could have closed the kitchen, turned off the porch light, and not asked to join anyone, or anyone to join me. And that probably would have been ok.

But this morning, as I sat pondering my day yesterday, I thought of the manger.

Because the birth of a child brings people together. I remember when my niece Courtlyn was born. It caused something to change and shift. It brought people together. I’ve purchased two plane tickets this year to go see my sweet baby Choi.

The birth of Jesus did the same thing.

If Jesus would have come as a full grown man, it probably would have just been weird. Like, out of nowhere this 30 year old just appears. And people might not have noticed. He might have just blended in.

But he came as a baby.

So people gathered.

And they continue to do so. Even people who don’t believe a baby came, people who celebrate different holidays during this time, they all gather.

I think there were so many lovely things about Jesus coming as a baby. So many beautiful, unique stories that spun off of that singular moment. But, as I ponder yesterday and think forward to later today, I believe that I have found a new favorite angle to the story of baby Jesus in the manger.

It caused people to gather.

I pray you have someone to gather towards today, I send love and light if you’ve lost people that you’ve normally gathered too. I pray you find a piece of them today. If you have an abundance of people to gather with, pull up another chair and invite someone in.

Let us gather together.

Happy Christmas my friends.

Photo by jessica drake
Sitting in the dark.

December 18th, 2016

I’ve been hemming and hawing over grouping these words into sentences for an hour or so mainly in my brain but also over text to my friend Amanda.
During the holidays there are articles and videos and news segments about dealing with this or that or the other thing. There are lists of coping with depression or grief or being away from home or being alone or being single or divorced and literally everything in between.

I don’t like to add to white noise.

But the nagging in the back of my brain reminds me that there’s probably something I need to say for myself anyway.

I live a full life.

An always-busy-never-see-my-roommate-have-no-clean-clothes-survive-on-espresso-and-la-croix full kind of life.

I honestly couldn’t count on one hand the amount of completely free weeks I had in 2016.

Sometimes I overdue it and I’m learning to say no.

The holidays are like my normal schedule on crack. Presents to buy, presents to wrap, cookies to bake, parties to throw, parties to attend and also sleep and sanity.

I came home Friday night after having beers with coworkers and just sat in my dark house watching tv. Because, along with all the things that the holidays brings it also brings anxiety.

I think all of the lists and articles are good.

But I also think it’s ok to take a moment to sit in the dark. It’s ok to take a breath. It’s ok to miss a party so that you don’t have to “make it through” the holidays but so you can enjoy them.

For me, sometimes I’m sad. Sometimes I have anxiety. Something being a single person during the holidays is hard.

Sometimes I need to sit in the dark.

So I did.

And it helped.

Because I live a full life.

I have people that love me and I love them back.

I have a job and a life and traditions that I am creating regardless of my marital status.

So my mantra for the holidays is this: choose to sit in the dark with some Christmas lights on. Choose to slowly drink your coffee or catch up with a friend while baking. Choose to cry if you need to and wipe your tears off so they don’t freeze on your cheeks. Choose to do what you need to do to enjoy the holidays not just survive them.
Choose to have this be the year that redefines how you live during the holidays.
Savouring, laughing, and maybe, just maybe, sitting in the dark sometimes.