It’s the last day of 2020.
This year was so difficult I don’t even know how to write sentences about it that get to the truth of what it means to be a person today. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you things will get better tomorrow on January 1, 2021. I don’t even know what “better” means at this point, and I certainly don’t know when that shift, whatever it looks like, will occur.
What I can provide is a space for us to be virtually together — this open thread — and also the incredibly generous, vulnerable, honest, genius words my co-workers at Autostraddle shared when I asked them to participate in our New Year’s Eve round table.
With the knowledge that we cannot rely on much, this year I asked the Autostraddle team: In a chaotic world, how will you show up for yourself and provide yourself with the consistency you need in 2021? Here’s what they had to say.
I’d love to hear what you have to say about this in the comments, too. Wishing you health, love, and happiness, sincerely sincerely sincerely, today, tonight, tomorrow, and every day.
Comments
Gosh I love you all
I love how thoughtful and generous you all are ~ that you want to extend that thoughtfulness and generosity to yourselves too.
That you keep trying, and sometimes that trying looks like telling yourself it’s ok to stop, to breathe, to just be and not do, and sometimes that trying looks like going to take a walk or doing the dishes because actually that’s going to help you feel better, and sometimes (so often!) that trying is finding ways to give friends, family, community, strangers: to give grace, to give practical support, to give space, to give love.
It’s been a hella hard year. You may be battered, bruised, heartbroken, exhausted, but you’re here and you made it through. Take a moment and feel in your bones what it is that brought you through.
That, in the core of you, is what you are bringing into 2021. It’s yours and your gift to yourself.
Here’s to you, stepping through in 2021 ✨💜✨
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Thank you Vanessa, thank you to all of you
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For myself, I want to take through into 2021 the ability to see beauty in the smallest things, to take time to look at a tiny mushroom growing on the moss on a tree, the way frost looks on the rough sidewalk. To keep playing music and finding how it feels to be absorbed in the now, not the then or the maybe. To not react to others from fear or exhaustion…and to not constantly judge myself by the fear of how others feel. To give myself love.
And to take some days off as soon as it’s possible bc damnnn 3 days vacation this year was not enough
<3
This was just what I needed to read today. Thank you all for sharing <3
I’ve just finished rereading my 2020 diary (very patchily maintained) and while it’s not fun looking back and watching myself repeatedly spiral into major depressive episodes, it’s also actually really encouraging to see the ways that I did show up for myself, or at least tried, and how I tried to be gentle on myself and how I seem to at least have a fairly good sense of what my needs are and what needs to be done, even if it’s sometimes just too hard to face actually doing those things.
One of the things that I keep intending to do for myself every year is to develop better community ties and get some description of regular therapy happening. I don’t know how well I’ll go with the therapy in 2021, because Australia’s already facing massive problems with too many people needing therapy and not being able to get appointments – the Black Summer bushfires followed by covid is an especially bad combination – to the point where people who are acutely suicidal can’t get appointments for 6 months because there’s just no time, even with therapists working way over their previous hours, and other horror stories like that. I’m also currently living in an under-serviced rural area right near a state border, and every time the border closes down, it fucks over thousands of local people who can’t physically get to their only available healthcare providers, who are only 20mins drive away, but on the wrong side of the border. If people here keep getting slack about social distancing and covid keeps coming around again, the border nightmare will probably keep stopping and starting for all of 2021 too. So I don’t know how well I’ll go making therapy happen in 2021, but I’m trying to plan how to work on my own journalling/reflecting and goal-setting types of rituals, and set about doing more self-help research online, to try to keep things moving.
nicole i have the same thing of having waaaay more to do. thanks for sharing about your mornings – i needed to hear that. thank you thank you thank you!