Dear 2022, I am still processing you.featured

Dear 2022,

I write this as I reflect on everything you brought me. Everything you made me feel. This time last year, I was looking forward to starting a new journey of becoming a yoga teacher.

My office was closed down and I was forced to work from home for a week or more. During that time, I was so over the pandemic and having to work from my kitchen table (again).

2022 began with such uncertainty, and while I tried to push that uncertainty away, it continued to bubble up within me and those around me.

It was a year when I felt excited to have a social life again but that made it all just so much more confusing. It was a year where I focused on connecting with others, and sometimes that felt so paralyzing after spending so many months in covid solitude.

It was scary to return to concerts. Would I get sick and die from covid? Or would I get shot in a sea of people?

Then again, it was joyous to return to concerts, and plays, and all of the fine arts I appreciate witnessing in person.

I’m looking at a list of things that I did this year. I realize this year was not one of huge external accomplishments for me. I didn’t win any gold medals or accolades. It was a year of looking inward and looking inward deeply.

Yoga teacher training proved to be the most uncomfortable life training of my life. It was also the most beautiful. I ripped open old wounds there – ones that I thought had faded forever. I felt so much it hurt but I soldiered on and saw the beauty of connecting to not only the beauty that lives inside of me, but also the wretched pain, imperfection, and old thought patterns that share the same space.

I traveled for work a lot more than I ever have, and no, it wasn’t glamorous. It was lonely and isolating, a reminder of my covid lockdown yesteryears.

I realize this year I fought for more connection with humans than I have ever before. Maybe because I was scared that it would be ripped away from me from one day to the next?

My group workout classes were marked “mask optional” and when people wore masks in public it was like a scarlet letter: “Do you feel sick?” “Were you exposed?” Now people began thinking those wearing masks were being too overly cautious, or were just plain weird, or actually had covid in that very moment.

I taught more yoga than I thought possible. Went wayyy beyond my comfort zone, reminding myself that I never embarked on the yoga teacher journey for me, but rather to help spread love and light to others in the world. And I did. I taught in English, in Spanish, and on the top of the 2nd tallest skyscraper in all of Latin America (thanks, Sweegen LATAM!).

I spent many weekends away with my husband in beautiful resorts to celebrate life and love. I reconnected with old friends from high school, CrossFit, past jobs, past lives, and family I drifted away from. We all hugged and laughed again. We reminisced: we remembered old loves, memories, and brighter days. It was a year filled with a lot of love but also a lot of realities.

I met therapy for the first time and that has been a journey all its own. It has taught me to stay curious in all of my relationships, to seek to understand other people’s trauma before I try to unleash my own trauma onto them. And so much more. How difficult it can be to not only be aware of your own pain and how it affects you and others but to take accountability for making true changes through actionable goals you set for yourself.

Food for thought, right?

Ahh and how I mustn’t forget how I brought people together through Taylor Swift ticket pre-sale events, yoga classes, holiday celebration planning, and making an effort to spend time with not only my close friends and family but their adorable babies too. Yes, I think I am still okay with being a cool auntie forever.

My year’s theme was “reconnection,” “fear,” and “growth” fear regarding reconnection and fear of plans being cancelled by external circumstances beyond my control. But I lived and lived as much as I could. I didn’t let that little fear cloud get the best of me. Growth flowed through my veins. Old versions of me danced alongside the present version of me.

2022, boy am I still processing you.

What was your year about? Have you processed it fully yet? What will your 2023 be about? What will you place the most focus on? Is there a theme or intention you want to set for this next year?

Please share your responses with me in comments, emails, texts, or good ol’ phone calls.

Love Deeply and Forever,

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