OPEN QUESTIONS // What's in a Year?
Just when you thought you’d had enough of other people’s year-end round-ups, it’s time to make one of your own. I would love it if you shared any of your thoughts and feelings here, in the comments, but/and I’d love to know that you used these prompts to process inside journal pages — or inside the openness of your imagination.
Looking back over the last twelve months, in what season or during what time was your loss, your aloneness, your emptiness the sharpest, the stickiest, the most difficult to live inside? What else was going on at that time, and/or how would you characterize that moment within the year? Is there anything to glean about how the surrounding circumstances—the sun, the rain, the holidays, the Mind Days, your workload, your routine or lack thereof—played into how you felt so that you might perhaps brace yourself or plan or pray well or just in some way prepare for when (if) something like that comes around again? How can you accept, allow, and understand the grief you felt in 2022 so that you might help yourself be with grief in 2023?
When and where was your grief or aloneness or fear or anger or doubt something that allowed you to expand or generate or grow or learn or just be, as you are meant to be? When did it offer something to you, even if the offering was the subtle energy of acceptance? When did you accept it? How did it feel to allow grief to lend you something, to be additive in your life? Would it be useful to make room for more of that in the coming set of seasons?
In which moments were you pleasantly surprised by life? What seemingly random occurrences presented themselves to you in a positive and generative way? What unplanned ideas, events, opportunities, or individuals showed up, and is it possible to understand any of those instances as a gift? If so, a gift from whom? What if you gave yourself license to understand them as gifts, and license to understand the gift-giver, too—to understand or imagine who it was that wanted you to have something good and useful and surprising. And what if you thanked them now, and asked them to keep bringing you acceptance and connection in 2023?
Where were you a year ago? What did you go into 2022 wanting for yourself? What feelings, storylines, and desires held the most sway over your mood and mindset as this year began? Was there space for wanting and desire, and if so, what did you want or desire? How did your overall expectations for 2022 square themselves with what arose and offered itself to you as the months unfolded? Did you find what you needed, at least some of the time? Make note of all the instances wherein a “yes” is available there, and see if you can understand something about how you managed, how you pulled through, who helped you, how or why you hung in there, and maybe most importantly, what it felt like to connect with what you desired. If you feel like you didn’t find what you needed, what desires will you carry over into 2023? And how can you renew your relationship with that longing so that it becomes fresh and alive, and ready to be fulfilled?
Who were your biggest supporters in 2022? Who saw your grief and sorrow as something sacred? Who gave you time and space to express it? Who understood that sometimes you needed to protect it? What can you do to thank those people—and, what would it mean for you to pass on that care to others?
When it feels safe to do so, let yourself call to mind three instances of difficulty or challenge or grief from the last year — whether those instances comprise a week, a weekend, or a few hours. Times you didn’t love who you were, or what was happening, or how you felt or who you found yourself without. Times you felt an all too large merging with sadness; a sort of blacking out of the sun. Without dwelling on them now, touch on those instances lightly enough to pick a word or a phrase that represents each of them. Just whatever first comes to mind. Then, hold those three words or phrases (one for each instance) loosely in a sort of pocket in your mind, and go out into nature in whatever way is safe and generative for you. Find trees, grass, running water, dormant rose bushes, snow-frozen tall grass, fallow backyard gardens, urban cemeteries. As you move through the natural word, picture yourself gently letting go of those words or word-phrases one by one into the landscape. Now, in these dark days, let the earth care for that darkness. Now, in these days of slowly increasing daylight, let nature’s lifecycles process those experiences with you — and show you how beauty and sorrow belong to the world. How you and every part of you belongs to the world.
