New Year’s Reflection and Wish

After ringing in the new year with family, I woke up to this beautiful, hazy sunrise on the first morning of 2023: 

In the quiet of a house still asleep, I wanted to write. I didn’t post frequently in 2022. Time not spent at the day job was divided between family and working on Mother Christmas. With one teenager already in college and another headed there in the fall, I’m aware of how quickly time is flying and how any time spent with them is a gift.

But on January 1, 2023, I first turned to Twitter as I have done every morning since Russia’s attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.  I wake up and check the news, getting the latest updates from Ukrainian journalists and activists I follow, many of whom have been on the front lines. I sit for a moment with the weight of it, and then a prayer. 

By the time I have published this, on Ukrainian Christmas Eve, January 6, 2023, Ukraine has been at war for 316 days. In Ukraine, as well as around the world, there continue to be battles, massacres, injustices.  There are also moments of grace, joy, love, and resilience. 

Tonight is when my family celebrates Ukrainian Christmas Eve, Sviat Vechir. It is on this holiday more than any other that I think about my family, my ancestors, and the country my grandparents were forced to leave. I have been raised with, or maybe inherited, a profound sense of longing for Ukraine and her people and culture.

My grandparents survived WWII, but like many others, they were unable to return home to Ukraine. After time in the Displaced Persons camps, they emigrated to the United States and built their lives in Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. Their children and grandchildren were raised to never forget what they were forced to leave behind. Today, new refugees are resettling in Chicago and in other places, leaving so much behind. 

Growing up, my grandparents were my examples of the different ways that war and trauma can change people. Four people with four very different responses to their past.

I learned from them, and from others of their generation, that there are many shades of resilience: humor, creativity, hospitality, adaptability, conservation, anger, silence. We see this in the stories shared from Ukraine, as well as the stories from other places around this country and the planet where people are fighting for their lives. 

I keep asking myself: How do I begin to formulate a wish for the new year with such a backdrop? 

I’ve sat with these words and feelings for a week now, writing and erasing and writing again. I keep coming back to this Leonard Cohen lyric:

There is a crack in everything, that’s where the light gets in. 

~Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

We are living in communities — global, national, and familial — that are fractured and wounded. Trying to figure out how to heal those wounds is something many of us will spend our lifetimes working toward.

In talking with friends and family over the past few weeks, so many people are feeling a deep longing for connection — with those we’ve lost or lost touch with, with those we have not yet met — as well as spiritual and existential longing for a kinder, more peaceful and more just world.

What I heard and saw in person and on social media around New Year’s Eve was a sadness that goes hand-in-hand with that longing. Some of it comes from the pandemic, some of it comes from political and economic injustices, some of it comes from war and aggression, some of it comes from lack of resources to help with mental and physical health.

All around us, people are feeling loss and lost. Voices are crying out, but there does not seem to be enough conversation about that sadness, about that longing. People continue to feel unheard and unseen, or ignored.

This week, a new co-worker recommended a book: Susan Cain’s Bittersweet. In it, I read this, and it rang true:

If we could honor sadness a little more, maybe we could see it — rather than enforced smiles and righteous outrage — as the bridge we need to connect with each other. We could remember that no matter how distasteful we might find someone’s opinions, no matter how radiant, or fierce, someone may appear, they have suffered, or they will.
― Susan CainBittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

So here is my imperfect but sincere wish for the New Year:

In this new year, when we reach out our hands, may we find other hands there to safely take hold of, to lift us up, to bring us close. And when we are able, and we see hands reaching out in earnest, may we find the strength to take hold of them.

May the obstacles that stand in the way of connection begin to be eradicated and may bridges take their place.

May we see people as they need to be seen, and may each of us find our way to the communities that will see us and love us and help us to heal ourselves, others, and this planet.

***

Love and blessings in the new year.

 

Beginnings and Believing

A new year–the way we name one cycle of the earth’s orbit around the sun.

So the old year comes to a close, and we collect the major events of those 365 days. We review them like a catalog or a library or a photo album. The years do seem to take on personalities, smaller characterizations that pertain to our selves or our circles, a larger Zeitgeist when we attempt to look at the year globally, greater than the sum of our personal experiences.

Then we move into a new set of days. While I’m generally not a fan of the flashy side of the holiday, this is what I do like about New Year’s Eve. When we end one thing, it creates a new beginning. That’s a rather remarkable gift. It’s permission and a challenge. A new year gives us the time and space for new beginnings, to pay attention to things we may have missed, to make something out of nothing.

Last year was not an easy year. 2014 had a lot of heartaches and challenges. Overall, I’m not sad to see it go, though there are moments of grace and beauty that I treasure.

To use a running metaphor, I feel like 2014 was a series of sprints. Professionally and personally, I moved in small, productive bursts, counting the days in between deadlines and holidays.

Last year had a lot of in between days.

In 2015, I’m shifting my focus to goals that may stretch a bit further into the horizon, to longer projects and novels, to seeds planted last year that require still more nurturing to come to fruition.

If 2014 was made up of sprints, 2015 will be a marathon. I hope to move through the new year with better organization and momentum. I think I’m a creative sprinter at heart, so this feels counterintuitive, but we’ll see.

As far as the world and those I love, this is my wish for the new year:

May we treat each other with more kindness in this next circle around the sun. May we cultivate relationships with people to whom we can entrust our hearts and our dreams. May we find ourselves looking into the eyes of someone who truly sees us and believes. At the end of the next 365 days, I hope we are all paying closer attention, and I hope that somehow there is more love in the world.

Happy New Year.