No new beginnings this year! Or ever...

Unpopular opinion time!

There is NO SUCH THING as a new beginning.

Or starting again.

Or closing the book.

Or “letting it go.”

I know, I KNOW. 2020 sucked. Yet how many people, at the end of ANY year, have said “Ugh, I can’t WAIT to see this year GO!” Be honest with yourselves. I know I have certainly done it.

December 31, 2017, I was “closing the book” on a year I hated. I threw a big party. I drank champagne and rang in a new year. It was going to be better. It HAD to be better.

January 1, 2018, I still woke up a widow. I still woke up lost, listless, with a broken heart.

I tried, relentlessly. Every day was going to be “the” day that I managed to start things over, for myself. A new day, a new beginning, a whole new life.

I got a new house.

I got new furniture.

I got new friends.

I went new places.

I met new people.

I got a new cat. AND a new dog.

I changed how I ate. How I looked. My professional goals.

I couldn’t let it all go. I couldn’t close the book. I genuinely thought something was wrong with me. I was missing the point, or I wasn’t figuring something out. I was missing some key ingredient to slamming the door shut on all the awfulness I’d lived through.

Last year, though, through the process of moving back to where I’d lived my whole life…to the place I’d become a widow…I realized…

I wasn’t supposed to.

I’m not supposed to forget it all happened.

I’m not supposed to become a blank slate.

I am simply supposed to absorb it. Accept it. Make peace with my broken pieces…

And resume.

I am not a “new” Megan, nor am I the old one. I am the sum of all my parts. The broken ones, the burnt ones, the bent ones, and the ones still perfectly in place. The one who lost, and the one who loves again, in a totally different way.

While, as a widow, at first, this felt like a profound epiphany relating to my circumstances…it dawned on me last night that this applies to everyone.

The marriage that didn’t work out.

The job lost, and the financial security along with it.

The parents who died. The pregnancies lost, or not kept. The friendships that pandered.

Life accumulates for us all. We all have things we WISH we could forget, “move on” from, or “start over” after.

Except, we can’t; none of us can. We learn from it, and change from it, too. It adjusts the level of tolerance we have for certain personalities, or situations. It can alter our language, or the way we choose to speak to others. It can either enhance your ability to empathize or cause you to care less what happens, in the world. It can make you brave, or more afraid, or both, simultaneously. No matter how it presents itself in you, though, the experience remains a part of you.

So, as you proceed into a “new year,” where we are hopeful that life will become less complicated again, don’t try to forget this all happened. Remember the lessons you learned, as you watched a world unravel…or felt yours spiral out of control.

Absorb it. Accept it. Make peace with it.

And then…

Resume; as someone who knows more, feels more, and is a little better prepared for the next round of life.

XOXO.