A year ago today, I was traveling alone to Vermont. It was the first time I’d ever taken a solo trip just by myself and for myself. Honestly, it was one of the best weeks of my life.
I’d spent the previous six December’s anxiously watching the calendar tick down to December 31st. To the annual reminder that in 2010, I’d thought I was just going to a NYE party and having a fun night. Instead, I was raped and left to pick up the pieces of a body that no longer felt like mine (see blog here).
Taking that week for myself last year to confront those memories head on…to burn them at midnight in a circle with five old women who chanted and taught me about loving my wounds…to the strength I found to stand up to my husband and tell him I *was* going on this trip alone no matter what…to coming home to find he’d destroyed the house and blown a few thousand dollars to “punish me” for leaving him for a week…to making the commitment to myself that in 2017, I was going to put me, first (see blog here).
That was my resolution almost 363 days ago: Me First.
I failed a lot on that resolution this year, but in the end, I made the decisions I needed to make in order to put me first. In order to choose happiness, choose me, and choose a better life than constant fear and pain…of him, of myself, of life.
And maybe that’s what resolutions are. Some failure, some success, and in the end, things are just a little bit different, but in exactly the way you needed.
So for 2018, here’s my new resolution…my new motto:
It’s Okay.
It’s okay to cry when divorce gets painful. It’s okay to be angry when life isn’t fair and the man who hurts me gets away with so much. It’s okay to feel lostand to fail and to have to start all over again. It’s okay to have no idea what tomorrow holds, or what I want next.
It’s okay to follow my heart, to date, to maybe fall in love again.
No pressure. No shame. No expectations.
2018 is right around the corner, and we’re all going to be okay.
