“This is it. This is the year things get really great!” I can still hear my friend’s words from last year’s NYE party, as he yelled them into my ear over the pulsing trance music and the noise of the crowd. I remember agreeing, feeling deeply in my bones that something big was coming—something exciting!
New Year’s Eve has always felt potent to me, so full of possibility and hope. The chance to start again, or to quit a bad habit, or to wear that one sparkly dress I can’t wear any other time. So, what happens when hopeful, exciting possibility turns into a raging dumpster-fire meme? How do we cope?
The way the whole world interacts has shifted this year, and with that new tilt it’s hard to find balance, hard to find meaning. I have found a great deal of solace in self-care (and, yes, I know that’s a term that gets thrown around a lot these days in a vaguely-supportive-but-mostly-an-excuse-to-buy-yourself-stuff kind of way).
To me, self-care looks like listening to my internal voice and checking myself. Instead of thinking, “Wow, I was so stupid to think that this year would be great,” I can reframe and tell myself, “It’s completely okay that I had hope for a new year; I had no idea how things would go.”
I can be patient with myself and others. I can take a little extra time to try to understand where someone else is coming from, why they think the way they do. I can question why I believe something and be open to new information. I can be still, focus on my breath, stretch my body, go for a walk, learn to play an instrument, have a shower. I can also give myself permission to stay in bed all day occasionally, because this world can get incredibly overwhelming.
As time goes on and temporary public safety measures stop feeling so temporary, it’s tempting to feel like we could have done better—that, somehow, we could have known. But the truth is that we were not equipped to handle 2020. We had no warning. We had no clue.
The most powerful act of self-care I have found is to forgive. Forgive myself for not knowing, for getting angry, for dropping that class, for not going outside. Forgive others that their best hasn’t really been good enough, that community supports have been failing, that online learning is a totally different arena than being in a classroom.
When we forgive and let go of anger and pain and resentment, a new space opens up. Space to learn something new. Space to try something we’ve never tried before. Space to find hope again.
As we say goodbye to 2020, we have the opportunity to reflect, to make peace. This is the end; we will never live out that year again. And we have no idea what 2021 will bring. We are still sailing in uncharted waters, and there are still some leaks in the boat.
But hasn’t it always been that way? We never really know what tomorrow will bring. All we can do is take the time to be gentle with ourselves, to allow room for error, and to believe that, whatever happens, we’ll make it through.
Every end is a new beginning.