Year in Review - 2017

A recap of my year.  I like to do this exercise and take a moment at the end of the year to pause and be proud of the growth that occurs.  I may require more sleep than I did before, or not be able to recover from a night out as quickly, but I also learn and mature.  I truly believe that I am an improving version of myself and the lessons and experiences that happen throughout the year are critical to that growth.   Thank you, 2017.   It was a very important year.

Travel:
I started the year with a trip to San Francisco and spent my birthday in NYC.   In September, it was Oregon, the Northwest being a favorite destination of mine.  It was my first time white water rafting.  The Salmon River and my childhood girlfriends were the perfect companions.  We laughed, we paddled, we each took a little something from the day on the water that I don't think we'll forget. There was also a first visit to Key West, a girls weekend in Las Vegas, a weekend of freedom in Washington DC and some local New England explorations.

I spent many summer weekends sailing and had my first overnights at a few New England harbors: Gloucester, Rockport, Marblehead, and Plymouth.    I learned the magic of "cruising"  - arriving to a place by sea, exploring a new restaurant by dingy, returning to your little "home" at its mooring.  There are sunsets, sunrises and a pace of time that is otherwise hard to describe.

Life: 
As I mentioned earlier, I divorced in 2017.  I am not ashamed of my divorce.  My relationship was in no way a failure.  My ex and I were together for 15 years.  Our love was real and our beautiful son was born as a result of that love.  However, the relationship had died.  At 36 and 41, we gave each other the gift of letting go.  It was not easy but it was right.  We did not want years of resentment and lives un-lived to become what our new normal.  We wanted to teach J true bravery and strength.  Our relationship was bold since the day we met.  We both live with our hearts forward and take chances.  We accomplished many of the things that we wanted to achieve together.  We walked away ahead.  We cashed out with chips on the table.   This was critical because we continue to be a family - we raise J together, we navigated the legalities and separation of assets, there is still paperwork and untangling to do.  I am extremely proud of the way we divorced and am certain that it has created a foundation for us to build the next chapter of our family together.

I also sold my house in the suburbs and found an apartment in the city to live in this year.  This is my first time living alone and while it took some getting used to, I have grown to really enjoy it.  There are moments now when I feel true peace in my quiet home.  I also have made new friends in our building and city life.  I have learned that I enjoy the dynamics of the city more than the suburbs.  Having spent my childhood in a rather traditional suburban life, there are days that the unfamiliarity feels daunting.  I don't have a model of a divorced working woman in the city raising a son however I'm learning to chart my own course. 

Art: 
Sleep No More, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Moth, Out of the Mouth of Babes, The Nutcracker (Classic and Urban) and finishing the year with a comedian - no doubt an art form.

Work: 
I was inching my way toward this change since leaving finance in 2014 and last year I officially shed my old title and job for something new.  There is a lot to learn but I am committed to achieving a more engaged role and I think I have found a firm where that is possible.  Continued professional growth is a major goal of 2018.

Parenting: 
I chronicle many of the things J and I do together on this space.  But as my boy begins his 5th year, I can say with certainty that I am proud of the mother that I am and so proud of the boy we are raising.  We do plenty of fun things, combined with the mundane, and he's a happy, imaginative boy who brings joy to so many.  I am certain that he feels loved and safe.


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This Christmas a special friend gave me Oprah's What I Know For Sure.  Reading it this week has prompted me to think about what I know for sure.  I think I will close out 2017 with a reflection of what I know to be true.  First my own words then a perennial favorite:

In my own words, I know that I can do hard things.  I know that life can be very different than what you imagined it to be and yet still be beautiful and hopeful and filled with magic.  I know how important it is to let go with peace and move forward into the light of your next chapter.

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

Play it as it lays

Yesterday I finished Joan Didion's Play it as it Lays.   After watching her documentary, which I wrote about earlier, I bought her 1970 classic to familiarize myself with her work.  In less than 200 pages, Didion's precision with words is what I found most remarkable.  I loved the pacing of the novel - brief, quick, nuanced.

It was a book about a woman in struggle.  As light on words as Didion is, she is not light with subject matter.  She doesn't try to make her protagonist something that she is not - she is a depressive and the heaviness of her inner struggle is what drives the novel.  The magic, for me, was in her brilliant sentence structure and ability to craft the story that she wanted to tell. 

"One thing in my defense, not that it matters: I know something Carter never knew, or Helene, or maybe you. I know what “nothing” means, and keep on playing. Why, BZ would say. Why not, I say.” 

Point of View - Seth Godin

That's the difference between saying, "what would you like me to do," and "I think we should do this, not that."

A point of view is the difference between a job and a career.

It's the difference between being a cog and making an impact.

Having a point of view is different from always being correct. No one is always correct.

Hiding because you're not sure merely makes you invisible.
-Seth Godin

Christmas weekend

We celebrated Christmas with the family this weekend.  The house was bustling with cousins and friends.  My parent's house felt just as I remembered it as a kid - warm, loving and a little bit chaotic.  Kids were tearing through gifts, getting one half-way out of it's package before the next distraction.  Talking to each other over walkie talkies, throwing footballs, a sleepover at Grammy & Papa's so the fun wouldn't stop.     

J truly believes in the magic of it all.  We sent his elf Maxi home to the North Pole (J didn't really like being watched all the time!) --- Rudolph came and picked him up and believe it or not, the next day it snowed!  We think Maxi was sending a message that he had arrived safely.   On Sunday at the family party, Santa came with a gift for all the kids and amazingly enough he knew J liked monster trucks (!!) 

A season of magic and anticipation...  we had a great time!

Wholehearted manifesto

I always come back to this.

The Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto
Above all else, I want you to know that you are loved and lovable. You will learn this from my words and actions—the lessons on love are in how I treat you and how I treat myself.

I want you to engage with the world from a place of worthiness. You will learn that you are worthy of love, belonging, and joy every time you see me practice self-compassion and embrace my own imperfections.

We will practice courage in our family by showing up, letting ourselves be seen, and honoring vulnerability. We will share our stories of struggle and strength. There will always be room in our home for both.

We will teach you compassion by practicing compassion with ourselves first; then with each other. We will set and respect boundaries; we will honor hard work, hope, and perseverance. Rest and play will be family values, as well as family practices.

You will learn accountability and respect by watching me make mistakes and make amends, and by watching how I ask for what I need and talk about how I feel.

I want you to know joy, so together we will practice gratitude.

I want you to feel joy, so together we will learn how to be vulnerable.

When uncertainty and scarcity visit, you will be able to draw from the spirit that is a part of our everyday life.

Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it.

We will laugh and sing and dance and create. We will always have permission to be ourselves with each other. No matter what, you will always belong here.

As you begin your Wholehearted journey, the greatest gift that I can give to you is to live and love with my whole heart and to dare greatly.

I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you. Truly, deeply, seeing you.

To travel

We long to travel.  To explore a sight unseen, embrace the unfamiliar.  What draws us to it, I am not quite sure.  Perhaps to be in a place that you do not know allows a certain freedom that we long for - in unfamiliarity there are no norms or favorite spots or schedules.  If critical thinking is connecting the dots between things, a joy of travel - and exploring the unknown - might be a way of identifying new dots of which you can later connect a thread. 

.A Jose Andres restaurant, two charming dining rooms, a new neighborhood, history, an expansive evening of freedom.   A weekend in DC. 

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”  - Pico Iyer