January: Hard. Hard conversations with Hub. Home alone for two weeks while he was away on the first of three annual monthly winter snowboard trips. Started yoga teacher training and wondered if I had what it takes to keep going. Came home from my first intensive training weekend exhausted, overwhelmed, in tears, unsure. 2019 did not start out so great.
February: Snowpacalypse! Record-setting snowfall in the lowlands while I was home alone again for a week during yoga teacher training weekend. Big anxiety about ongoing relationship issues, driving in the slippery snow up hills, and the challenges of the training resulted in massive multi-day migraines. Still, the kindness of one of our Yoga instructors saved me and others with an offer to spend the weekend at her amazingly artistic and nurturing home instead of braving the elements and barely passable roadways. I survived! And felt a growing connection to my sister yoginis. A community was forming, born of hardship.
March: Hub's last snowboard trip and finally feeling settled and excited about the Yoga Teacher Training. Learning so much! Then off to our annual Kauai vacation, where depression and exhilaration danced together in an odd off-kilter jig. At least it was warm.
April: Another week of migraines and from the looks of my calendar, a too-busy month with something scheduled every day. But the end of the month took us to the Southeast to see friends near Charleston, South Carolina (where we lived for two years on a barrier island) and to Savannah, Georgia to see family. Fun trip full of memories of times past.
May: Hub's total knee replacement and difficulties navigating the caregiver/patient dynamics. Glad for modern medicine, amazing technology, and Hub's ahead-of-schedule and better-than-most progress, likely at least partially due to his "I'll do it myself" insistence on independence during recovery. I had to learn not to hover.
June: A Girls Getaway to the ocean beach with friends. Days of talk, laughter, ritual-making, and important insights. The respite I needed under sunny skies and starlit nights, embraced in loving friendship.
July: Migraines, GI issues, sadness. I felt lousy a lot of the time early in the month. I worried something was majorly wrong with me. (Relieved to find there wasn't). The end of yoga teacher training came late in the month with a 5-day learning retreat in the North Cascade mountains before a big graduation celebration. The close bond we'd formed as a group left us all amazed and grateful. After spending 200 hours together over 6 months of intensive learning and practice, it was both a relief and a bit sad to say goodbye to the experience...and to each other.
August: We were off to Minneapolis for Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Team training. Discovered an unexpected fondness for Minneapolis (in the summer!) and had fun exploring the city when not in sessions in a freezing hotel ballroom. The majority of the month was very, very, very difficult. Hub was gone for bit on an annual camping trip and then home to lots of very hard conversations that shook me to the core. I didn't know I was capable of rage, but I am and it was cleansing. Big learning in hard times. Life-changing, actually. I know myself and my limits and boundaries and strength in ways unknown before. The tremors I'd been feeling between us for, well, quite a long while, finally shook my foundation. It was no fun.
September: Rebuilding. Hub was away again to a favorite camping site for several days, then home to more relationship work, big epiphanies, intentional recommitment and reason for hope. Forty-seven years into our marriage and this felt like a new beginning; a second honeymoon. Gratitude and Grace abound. Also a family trip to my great-niece's wedding in Scottsdale and late in the month a perfect trip for Hub and me to NYC. Did I mention honeymoon? 😉
October: Hub left with an adventurer friend for 3 weeks in Nepal, on a trip planned for months, to sightsee and also to visit the two students whose educations we have been sponsoring for 5 years. Big Adventure! Instead listening to me whine about staying home alone, my friends invited me to join them in Maui for 10 days where I soaked up all the warmth, sun, and silky warm waters I could before returning to the 'wet months' in the Pacific Northwest.
November: Hub got home mid-month and we shifted into a very low gear, reconnecting and resting up for the holidays to come.
December: And here we are. (I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the current president was impeached and that was awesome, but of course, not the end of his reign, yet.)
This has been the most mellow holiday season I can ever recall. Family, friends, our annual seaside getaway, a couple of holiday outings....and all of it felt manageable and easy.
The absolute highlight was shopping together for a modest, understated, but very lovely diamond wedding band -- a tangible reminder of what we'd come through this year resulting in a recommitment to our long marriage, promising to go forward with renewed intention, honesty, love, respect, and care. When I look down at my hand and see that sparkle, I feel blessed beyond words.
It wasn't the easiest year, but a necessary one. Into 2020 I take a revitalized marriage, my devotion to family, my treasured friends, memories of, and plans for more travels, a deep and joyful spiritual practice, and a determination to right the upside-down world of our national political landscape. Into 2020 I take happiness, contentment, and optimism, which is such an unexpected blessing that I feel like I've had a personality transplant. Well, I'll take it.
At least, that's the view from here...©
Wow, you've had quite a year of ups and downs, hard and painful soul searching. One of the advantages of writing about it in this format is we readers got to experience the happy ending you deserve and we all want for you and your husband. Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteWow! What a lot! I no longer keep a day planner, but you've inspired me to do my own recap of the year. Happy New Year!
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