10 Lessons 2021 Taught Me

I am writing this from the light that peeks around the corner from grief. I am also writing this from my bed, where I am recovering from COVID.

I am remarkably calm and collected with this deadly virus coursing through my veins. I am also in awe at the speed with which we were blessed with this vaccine. This realization has me reflecting again on how we walk the path from devastation to resilience. This was the most difficult year of my life, bar none. I know I’m not alone in that feeling.

In moments of despair, we often beg for signs. Signs that this suffering is not for naught. Symbols in our countenance that these seedlings of pain will one day break through the thawing soil, leaning their stem-selves eagerly toward the sun.

As I feel the sun’s rays burst through the overcast sky onto my pale skin, I want to share with you all some personal learnings and wise words that found their way to me this year:

• People, especially friends and family, must earn access to you. I broke a cycle this year by creating important boundaries to protect my energy from those who were careless with it. A deep self-love grew in the wake of my grief, and I am so grateful I had the strength to no longer shoulder others’ emotional labor.

• We can love our shadows just as much as we love our light. Holding polarities in the same perspective is powerful. The world is just as hauntingly painful as it is dizzyingly miraculous. Monsters can also contain kindness. Suffering also contains great healing.

• The greatest gift you can give yourself and others is your story. “I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves, and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act.” - Janet Mock

• Accountability to others and the strength to hear the truth leads to real change. Projection or blind optimism are flawed coping mechanisms. “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end–which you can never afford to lose–with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” - Admiral Stockdale

• Imagination is the key to creating a better world. “All organizing is science fiction. we are bending the future, together, into something we have never experienced. a world where everyone experiences abundance, access, pleasure, human rights, dignity, freedom, transformative justice, peace. we long for this, we believe it is possible.” - Adrienne Marie Brown

• Write about your transformation before it happens. This can be in the form of a letter to your future self, or simply the story of your growth told from a place of hope. We have such deep untapped wells of self-healing. Reaching in is just as important as reaching out and grasping at the shape of who you will become.

• Forgiveness is not absolution. Acceptance doesn’t mean agreement.

• Changing conversations or relationships between people is not the key to creating antiracist organizations. We have to change the systems and the structures of oppression first.

• Nobody’s energy needs to balance your own. Rejection stings, but we don’t need praise to fill our cups. True freedom is being a self-generating system.

• Create, create, create. In a world surrounded by death and entrenched in white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, able-bodied supremacy, necrocapitalism, etc., we must forge forward and generate new ideas, art, movements, conversations, etc. Create for yourself. Create for your community!