I oscillate, swing back and forth between emotions.
A new year has come, but old feelings remain. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t know how to hold it all, honor it all.
If you came to the place where my heart is housed, swept away all the celebratory confetti, all the deflated balloons, all the new-year noisemakers. If you strained your eyes, perhaps looking a little longer, a little harder, you’d see yesterday’s stains on the floor, the spots where tears fell and soaked through.
I want to party,
but I still feel pain.I want the new year,
but I still feel numb.
I turned thirty five, just three days ago. Celebrated my son’s sixth birthday the day before that. I stepped into the recording studio yesterday to record the audiobook for The Matter of Little Losses. I should feel, it seems, elated and on top of the world.
But I am not on top of the world.
Rather, it feels, the world is on top of me.
I am here, fully here in the new of this year. But I am also holding my breath. For, all of last year was grief on the ground — grief in the dirt, grief in my gardens, grief in my dreams, grief in the grimace on my face.
All of last year was toil and therapy, and painstakingly ripping through everything that broke our family in the last few years. Every decision, every dissension, every crack, every change. Even growth spurt, every need, every disease, every dream.
I feel the hope of a new year in swing, of new life soon to be seeded into fallow ground.
But it comes with a cost.
It comes with the hard work of weeding,
tilling and tearing up the soil.
We cannot grow
on this ground, yet.Though the season
for grief
has ceased,the ground needs
to rest to prepare
for seeds.
We’re only twenty days into the new year, and already I’ve whispered no to countless people and things. I’ve pulled back on plans, pared down on plans. And the hard stops won’t stop any time soon because, between my husband and I, there are yet more nos to whisper. Yet more yeses to ponder.
We’ve lost so much
the last three years.And, still
we’re losing.All this breaking
is a blur.When will it end?
How will it end?
Who will it profit?
What will it profit?
I want to celebrate, but I want to cry.
I want to celebrate because hope is on the horizon. I want to celebrate because I believe in the science of seeds, believe that things buried really do come breaking through to brighter days. That is, of course, in the proper time and with the proper tending.
But I want to cry because it hurts. And I want to cry because it’s hard. I want to cry because the work is long and unseen. It requires unapologetic executive decisions made in the midst of uncertainty and unpredictability.
And yet, I know that, in time, my grief will be the very good that nourishes my gardens.
I know that the breaking and the pulling and the cutting and the tilling is the very toilsome work that will bring flowers to flourish on this fallow ground.
And so, here I am.
Standing on the edge of a new year, with yesterday’s tears soaking in the floor and today’s confetti, paradoxically piled on top.
Here I am, taking pictures. 1
Making memories, making meaning out of memories. Crying when the tears come and celebrating when the moments call for it.
Showing up in the gentle ways I feel can, and should. Whispering a lot of nos. Whispering yes in ways that might go widely and deeply misunderstood by others. Tarrying, taking my time. Returning to slow. Writing words and letting them carry me across the chasms of dissonance.
Here I am,
honoring yesterday’s grief
and tomorrow’s garden.
Working, while waiting.
Plowing, knowing a day will come when I can finally plant seeds.
And I just gotta ask — how about you?
Photographs in this post were taken by Rachel Marie Kang and Shin Sung Kang.
Here you are. Thanks be to God. 🖤
First off, happy belated birthday 🎂. Thank you for openly sharing your feelings, and making it ok for me to do the same. Sending you many prayers...Love you!