I’ve decided to add a new category to this site, for my most personal blogging a bit more, words that don’t necessarily relate to my role as publisher, and perhaps delve a little deeper without worrying about how this or that customer might react. Yes, that is a ‘thing’ in publishing, and I’m not immune to it. Officially declaring this space sacred from self-censoring considerations which can stymie so. I’m calling it ‘Graced’… because I’m hoping anyone reading and relating to any of it makes you feel just that. So this is a new home for my words that I’ll share into social media, too, whenever it feels right. When it doesn’t, my words will stay in draft, another set of the so called ‘morning pages’ writers everywhere are encouraged to keep. I’m choosing today, Valentine’s Day, to launch it. I normally jump on the ‘Valentine’s Day is just awesome bandwagon’ (which I basically believe it is), but on this Valentine’s Day, I just haven’t been in the best way or the best version of me. Not by a long shot. And that’s where the ‘taxed’ in the headline comes in.
In the fall of 2020, on Facebook, I described getting lost on a mountain in Beacon, NY, and being rescued. What I didn’t add was that incident immediately followed a soul searing, humiliating breakup, the death knell of a years long intimate friendship that is still too painful ‘to touch’, too confusing to make sense of, too personal to describe and certainly to recover from despite the longest walk on the most gorgeous days or beautiful trails. What I didn’t add either was a freak accident with a blender just a couple weeks later that nearly took off my pinkie–and the scars and nerve damage that remain. I understand it now as having been and perhaps still am in a continued state of being vulnerable following a psychic wound.
On #ValentinesDay2021, I’m alone but not alone with some dear family and friends to reach out to with a fun or goofy Valentine’s Day text, a glorious virtual company to lean on somewhat. I also know that anyone in or outside it with any heart and soul is considering the hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions around the world who have perished in this pandemic, the communities of first responders, and army of volunteers–and that there is just too much pain to process and too many completely broken hearts or hearts on the line–despite the promise of 2021, for so many, at least.
So… wishing a Happy Valentine’s Day to anyone who has suffered a devastating loss of a loved one, or injury, physical or psychic, during this past year. To anyone struggling with any aspect of your own health-emotional, physical, psychological and financial, too… one or more are so often interrelated, too–in a struggle that may still feel strangely new because… well, because no one prepared you or me or our kids on how to live through a pandemic and certainly not how to smile through it, and keep a stiff upper lip, not on any day, including and perhaps most of all, not on Valentine’s Day.
Here’s hoping you are mostly doing ok, maybe like I, taking this pandemic day to day, and remembering to believe that ‘I’m doing ok’ is a success story, too. I witness so many using this time to grow and learn too–in fact, to soar. I bow to your evolved sense of self preservation, and I follow closely and often for continued inspiration. In the meantime, listening too to the ever growing number of wellness experts (who’s not following at least a handful these days?) who insist we persevere when we cultivate a deeply held compassion for our own selves, too, and for believing in the exquisiteness and preciousness of our own survival. So here’s to compassion and believing washing over me, washing over you. Sending love. — Grace
