A LESSON IN THE EXPERIENCE... 2020

This picture was taken in April of 2019. It seems like a lifetime ago...

Happy New Year everyone!

I rarely write my blog posts, choosing to feature my fellow writers on their journeys! This has been such a momentous year, I wanted to say a few things. I felt it would be a real struggle to find anyone remorseful for the end of 2020. I remembered, however, welcoming the new decade with high hopes and high spirits around a Texas bonfire on the last cold December night of 2019 with fireworks and toasts... amid family and friends and lots of grandkids whooping and laughing.

This year I was alone, by choice and I stayed up to see the New Year in. At midnight, I opened my front door, (symbolically) kicked 2020 out, and with the last stroke of midnight welcomed in 2021, conditionally! With a hopeful, but cautious heart I welcomed the New Year.

No matter who you are, what you do, or where you are from... the year 2020 touched you in a manner you will not forget. For me, it was a journey that began in bewilderment. How could this happen? A question I asked over and again until I reached the apex of fear and anger. I was so frustrated as I tried to make sense out of the unbelievable, near dystopian sci-fi scenarios taking place before my eyes. I closed them... my eyes, I mean. My choice... If I wanted news I sought it at the source.

I chose to realize that the choices of others cannot harm me unless I allow them to.

I immersed myself in my work and my lifesaving #WritingCommunities. Shout out to friends new and old who helped me stay connected and kept me from feeling so alone! That is the real purpose of this article... to say thank you. I would mention each of you, but there are so many who unknowingly touched me during this time. I love you all!

I worked hard, sold my first fiction short stories, finished, and began querying my novel, but I still felt the isolation. I missed my family, interaction with my children and grandchildren. I got depressed and for several months fought this battle with myself... over the gamut of hair and nail salons and shopping instead of just the grocery store, lunches, dinners, birthday parties and gatherings... a social life to which I was accustomed that had become dangerous, both to myself and others. I was so sad, not just for myself, but for all of us. Yet, within the isolation, I learned new ways to be alone, and in turn new ways to be with people.

On my little piece of the planet, many were fooled and confused by the hyperbole... even after people began dying in record numbers. If it didn’t touch them... it wasn’t real. It has been very real to me from the beginning. We all made our own choices and found ways to get through it. I opted not to let anything harm the tenuous peace of mind I clung to. There is a familial separation that I grieve, and yet who knows what lies in store. It is a New Year... a new beginning.

I was given some really good advice on that novel I talked about earlier. I am rewriting, renaming, and reimagining. A wonderful project. It feels like an emerging miracle, yet inside the cocoon waiting to be born anew... expectantly awaiting the time of fulfillment.

It is a unique moment in which we are living. On the precipice of change, for surely our lives will not be, at least in our lifetimes what they were before. Freedoms we took for granted and people we took for granted... moments we took for granted.

I find myself rejoicing in the moments of life now, taking nothing for granted and loving and experiencing life on a deeper level than ever before.

I wish the same for you, my friends.

May the road rise up to meet you... and God hold you in his hand.