As one year ends and a new one begins, we all encounter the inevitable barrage of social media posts marking the passage of time. A lot of you are on beautiful vacations right now! Some of you are celebrating milestones such as getting married or marking years of sobriety. Others are grieving the loss of loved ones, newly departed or long gone.
On CBS Sunday Morning last weekend, they presented their annual homage to all of the notable (to them) folks who had died this past year in fields ranging from the arts, journalism, and business, to entertainment and sports. They even included the father of some high school friends of mine. To me, he was their dad in the crazy colored sport jackets, but to the rest of the world he was the well known hockey player Stan Mikita. It struck me how much all of those individuals had contributed to the world as we know it. How much their contributions to life in some way affected us all.
That then got me thinking about how we all leave a mark on this world in some way. For some of us, our impact is small, and local, maybe just within our family. For others, it is larger. But, whatever the size of the ripple, it creates an impact nonetheless, and we have no idea how the effect of that ripple will resonate and be passed along from year to year and person to person. I think of things like that when I do something as small as make my mother’s peanut butter cookies at Christmas. That recipe could have died with her, but now I hope I have passed along the love to my children, who will then associate Christmas with their mom’s peanut butter cookies and make it for their children in the years to come. I also think about my legacy as I work with teenagers to help them reach their dreams. I hope that someday they will think back to some small thing I said, some advice or words of encouragement, that made a difference in their life in a positive way.
In all this year end contemplation, I have been unable to label 2018 as either a “good year” or a “bad year” for me. In years past, that pronouncement has come relatively easily to me. THIS was a great year, I would think to myself. Or in trying years: I can’t wait for this year to end and for a much better new year to begin. All I could think about as 2018 ended was that this was a year very typical of life itself.
Some tragic things happened this year, including the loss of a young child of friends I care about deeply. Others have left us as well, such as the kind soul who was one of my husband’s bandmates, and a dear Auntie of mine who always made me feel special. Some things have weighed heavily on my heart, such as my father continuing to choose not to have a relationship with me, and other relationships that continue to be more trying than they need to be. There have been times this year when I have felt alone and without emotional support, and there have been times that have shown me who I can count on and who I, sadly, cannot.
2018 also showed me that the effort I have put in year after year on my own personal development, as well as that of my business, has begun to reap benefits. While I still often struggle to pay my bills and there is much more to be done, I increased the income of my college counseling and success coaching business by a whopping 98% this year and tripled the number of clients I served, all through recommendations and referrals. More importantly than that, I truly love what I do and love working with both teenagers and adults. It has taken me 30 years of working full time and 4 complete career changes, but I finally found the profession that makes my heart sing.
I was faithful with my chiropractic visits this year and, for the most part, feel a lot better and younger than I have in recent years. I still struggle with almost daily migraines, and had a health scare at the end of the year that threw me off balance for a few weeks. I have cut down on sugar and carbs, but still struggle with being consistent with that, and with finding time for not only exercise, but for self care in just about any form. That’s a constant challenge for me and has been my entire adult life.
I have been proud of some accomplishments this year though. I have read more and written more, and worked on some long standing limiting beliefs I have held about both money and about my worth. It has been slow to move the blocks, but I feel them shifting.
I have always made it a priority to spend quality time with my kids, but have kicked up my efforts in recent years, knowing that time is short before they will all be grown and busy with their own lives. Each moment together this year has truly been a gift. I found a way to take them on, not one, but two vacations this year, including one on a plane, marking the first time since I got divorced in 2005 that I flew with my children. That may not sound like much to anyone else, but I was proud to make it happen. My husband and I also took our first vacation together that was longer than 5 days. We spent a whopping 10 days in Hawaii back in September, celebrating a 3-year-delayed honeymoon and his 60th birthday. That was long a bucket list spot for me, and is one of my happiest memories of this past year.
Just as life offers good and bad, challenges and ease, tragedy and exhilaration, so goes 2018. And as 2018 ended, so began 2019. We celebrated my daughter’s 21st birthday on January 1st with a lovely brunch. Family and dear friends came. My darling 1 year old niece lit up the room as she always does. And my daughter’s friends sat around our dining room table for four hours drinking mimosas and talking and laughing. It made my heart happy. We woke up the following morning to the news that my husband’s mother had passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. It saddens me that I never had the opportunity to know her before that terrible disease took her essence. That same day, I drove with my son to the campus of Ohio State University to clean out his dorm room and drive home. Early in his first semester there, he decided that the fit was not right for him, so he will be attending classes locally this spring and transferring in the fall.
So, I look to 2019 without making resolutions. I’ve never been much for New Year’s resolutions anyway. They have always seemed too general or contrived to me, I guess. I have always preferred to make monthly goals and daily goals and grind away at improvement and progress in smaller chunks. I toyed with the idea of setting a “word of the year” for myself. I’ve done that in the past, but that has never really felt quite right for me either. I have many expectations for myself this year, though, and I want this year to be “better.” I want it to be easier, I guess. Don’t we all? But I also know that it will be much like every other year. Things will be gained. Maybe the Bears will win the Super Bowl! And other things and people will be lost. There will be happy days, and there will be tears shed, no doubt. Through it all, I hope that we will all battle less and support more, talk less and listen more, dig deep within ourselves to fight our demons and bring out the best in ourselves, for ourselves and for others too. More than anything, I have the same wish for myself that I do for all of us: That we will have the strength to persevere, no matter what the year ahead holds.
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