{Hers} Dear 2011

Dear 2011,

I’m writing you from the future. It has only been a few days since we parted and yet I have thought about you often.  You broke me.  Just when I thought I couldn’t be more broken you broke me.  When I felt like I had finally found my stride you knocked me over causing me to feel more lost than I had felt in ages.

My depression returned with a vengeance, my heart broke when I found myself holding my baby in my arms while she cried almost daily because children, yet sweet innocent precious children, at times can be so cruel.  I found myself wanting out. I struggled to get through wondering if I made the wrong career choice. Sure I love children and I love “helping people” but I felt like I was running on fumes I felt like I was giving everyone all of me with the exception of the two people who meant the world to me.  I found myself struggling with feelings of guilt and obligation fighting not to go back to my old ways in which I lived for validation from others rather than validation from within.  I felt angry, unappreciated and confused.   And then I felt my heart rip out of my chest when I was told that my Grammy received a diagnosis that broke not just my heart but her heart too.  Could it be that all of these memories we created this year, 2011, and all the years before she would one day recollect no longer? I struggled oh how I struggled.  I felt like I lost me and then I wrote.  And I prayed.  And I wrote.  And while I still struggled I also held on.  I held on for my life in an effort not to let everything I worked for, everything I prayed for, everything I dreamed of slip away from my weakened grasp.  I wrote.  I wrote before but in 2011 I wrote and when I did my heart sang and I felt like I was doing the very thing I was supposed to be doing.  I shared my story and in doing that I felt the shackles of my past that had held me captive for so long fall to the wayside.  I realized that I was so much more than my series of poor choices.  I opened by eyes and saw my sprinkles.  I took a moment to be still.  I made new friends. Wonderful friends and I’ve never met them in “real life” but I adore them.  I do.  Thank you Internet.

And so 2011 I thank you. I thank you not just for the obvious things but for the things that we often don’t give thanks for because they don’t seem worthy of gratitude.  Today I give thanks.  I give thanks because today is January 2012 which means I made it.  I made it through.  And it’s nice over here on the other side.  I mean don’t get me wrong at times you were good to me.  2011 is the year some of my dreams came true and the dreams of my loved-ones but I leave you knowing that I walk in victory.  My hope restored, my faith growing stronger and my heart still singing because into 2012 I carry over the greatest love I have ever known and some promise and my words – written words.  I am grateful to those who gave me a chance in 2011 who saw something in me and said “yes”.  I am grateful for my husband who loved me through 2011 and my daughter whose hugs and kisses soothed my ailing heart.

I am grateful for my mother’s prayers and my Grammy’s will to fight. My brother’s too.  The two of them are miracles.  I am thankful for my father’s wisdom and for the friendships that flourished over the year and the darkness that was always brought to the light even when it was hard to accept.  There is so much that I am grateful for and many of these things I bring with me to 2012 but to the tune of a new song.  A song of hope.  I don’t know what the future holds but my prayer is that in 2012 when the storm comes I will dance in the rain because according to a great quote that’s what life is all about. I pray this is my year of healing.  Dearest 2011 I am a nostalgic one which means I will look back on you often.  I will reflect.  I will tear up.  I will smile. But I will keep walking, walking onward to the life that awaits me in this particular year, a year in which will dream bigger dreams and step out of faith just a little more often.  A year in which I will love harder, and shift the majority of my focus back to the things and the people that literally rock my world,my irreplaceables.  I want to write more, I want to love more and I want to experience peace.  The kind of peace which surpasses all understanding.  The kind of peace only He can give to me. My heart is open.  I am ready to receive it.

This year I want to put aside my plan for my life so that I might be able to see what His plan for my life is.  Now to do it.

Good bye 2011.  I will think of you often but dwell on you I will not.

Sincerely,
Me – version 2012