Reflections Pt 14: See ya never 2024!
See ya never 2024!
Here I am recovering from multiple surgeries for the 3rd year in a row, bringing the total to 15 in 26 months. What a strange holiday season tradition this has come to feel like: triggering, a blurring together with past surgeries, creating new trauma and grief.
The end of the year can already feel like a season of grief. There’s a loneliness to the fall-holiday-winter transition; it can be comforting to embrace the solitude, curling inward. There’s great opportunity for reflection, nurturing, and practice with oneself. The drive to do so isn’t always there, but when I find the connection it serves me well.
At the same time, it brings up all that we no longer have. People and animal companions we’ve lost, our previous selves. I even miss flowers, and the lack of warm sun on the earth can feel lonely.
I continue on this healing journey in a state of limbo - my big picture situation hasn’t changed much since the collision occurred. Of course, progress has been made in many areas, though I have full time job that generates no income (it actually costs greatly), the lawsuit drags on, and I am still healing deep layers physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. I am working on feeling whole in the midst of healing so many different parts of me…
I wrote about this in early 2024… feeling stuck and witnessing movement all around me. I continue to feel this deeply. Yet, I no longer yearn to be the old me - surely, I miss her - but I recognize the immense growth and transformation that continues to happen in me. I daydream often about how I might want to show up in the world, for myself and others, when I have more capacity to integrate all that I continue to learn and experience.
And while my heart aches with all that I continue to miss out on due to recovery, and I certainly have many days feeling dragged down and overwhelmed, this experience has also allowed me to hone integral practices helping me “be” now, and continue to grow into who I am becoming.
Just a few of many more:
Finding peace and calm where I can (reading, meditation, and stretching in the mornings)
Saying no
Listening to my mental|emotional|physical|spiritual body, giving her what she needs and giving myself a break when I can’t do it all
Setting boundaries
Leaning in to what I need and trusting that I know
Dreaming big and being ok with uncertainty
Allowing all of my thoughts and feelings, with compassion and without judgment
Taking it day by day…
