A New Beginning

Today is January 1, 2019.  

I’ve never been a “party girl” on New Year’s Eve (wellll, maybe once or twice…), and have generally not considered New Year’s a big deal.

This year, however, I feel different.  

I’ve been struggling over the past year with illness, financial challenges, and fear about launching myself back into my work after many months of lying low.  (Don’t worry, I’m gonna be here for many years to come; I have way too much work to do before I die!)

Yet, last night, as my Beloved and I celebrated New Year’s in just the way we wanted to, I let go of some of the struggles of the past year.  I shed some tears, and then we had some silly fun watching Jimmy Stewart in “Harvey”. 

 And, I started to quietly celebrate the relationship that we have forged over the last two years. It is not always easy; and, it is always alive, always real, and always the source of much growth and loving co-creation.  I am deeply grateful.

When we drank a split of champagne in bed- well before midnight of course, just our style- I was feeling love for him and myself, and a renewed sense of hope for the future.  I started to imagine some of the things I could create in 2019; small glimpses of grandeur and possibility.

I woke up today feeling unusually light and happy, again optimistic about the coming year…maybe there is something to the tradition of the New Year after all, haha.

It was warm and sunny here, and I went out for a walk at a nearby pond where I’ve walked or jogged many times before. 

I like to take pictures of hearts, and very often see them on my walks. I’d tucked my glasses inside my shirt in case the opportunity arose. Toward the end of my brisk walk, I looked down and saw that my reading glasses were gone. 

I panicked.  I literally can’t read without them.  

I began retracing my steps hoping to find them on the ground.  I saw a couple walking toward me on the circular, half mile path.  One of the things I’ve been forced to learn over the past year or so is how to ask for help.  

It was foreign to me.  I’ve always been a very independent girl and then woman.  For me, it was one of the strategies I’d adopted to try to keep myself “safe”, emotionally and physically.  If I just took care of things myself, I didn’t have to be vulnerable.  I didn’t have to risk being hurt.  

And I was really good at it! Recently, I’ve been aware that when difficult situations arise, asking for help often doesn’t even enter my mind.  I do know that asking for help when I need it is the most self-loving thing to. Maybe being self-sufficient all the time was a good strategy long ago; not so, now.

Alas, here I was today at the pond, looking for my lost glasses.  This time I did think of asking for help.  And I had a moment of almost deciding not to, for the usual reasons- I didn’t want to bother anyone, I felt shy, it would be an imposition, blah blah blah.  

And then I thought:  What if I consciously made a choice to do things differently in 2019, starting now?  What if I just told these people walking toward me with their dog that I’d lost my glasses, and asked them not only to look for them, but to leave them on the big, circular rock near the entrance of the park if they found them?

So I did, and it felt good to have concern and support, even from total strangers.  Maybe especially from total strangers. And then I committed in my mind to keep doing this, to keep asking for help today at the pond, and any time I needed help.  From now on.

And those “small glimpses of grandeur and possibility”? I could use some help with those, too. Big step for me.

I doubt I’ll be ‘perfect’ at it, but that’s to be expected.  Old habits die hard.  

I never did find my glasses today, but that not what’s important.  

What’s important is that I asked for help. Over and over again, from other walkers, old and young.   And, as I sit here, wearing my old, broken glasses held together with scotch tape, I feel satisfied with that.   

I have begun.

---