Made New

This year was hard. I thought 2020 was challenging but 2022 left me bruised, beaten, and wanting to run for the hills. Well, really more like the beach.

As I recall what made this year so hard, I hesitate to write it down, knowing plenty of others have experienced their own hardships. Tempted to compare or “rank” my pain, I think back to Brene Brown’s words from an episode of her podcast Unlocking Us:

What’s crazy about comparison when it’s triggered by fear and scarcity, is that even our pain and our hurt are not immune to being assessed and ranked. So, without thinking, we start to rank our suffering and use it to deny or give ourselves permission to feel. . . .

The emotions that you’re feeling, that we feel when we deny them double down, they burrow, they fester, they metastasize. And not only do our feelings double down and grow, they invite shame over for the party. Because now, we’re like, I am a bad person, because I’m sad or scared or lonely, or frustrated or disappointed or pissed off. And other people have it so much worse than me.

I realize that to be more empathetic and compassionate to others, I must acknowledge my own pain rather than compare it. 

Sure, there were really good things scattered throughout the year. But for the better part of the year, I struggled to find hope in a pointless lawsuit or a rhythm in a wave of respiratory illnesses. I’m still processing the physical and emotional toll it took on me. 

I used to search for a meaningful lesson to make sense of every heartache. But now I understand that not all seasons come in perfect packages you can tie up in a bow. Everything may not happen for a reason. But I do believe everything can be turned for good. Love often shows up in our deepest pain.

If you faced your own kind of hard in 2022, consider this a reminder that you don’t have to make sense of it all. In difficult years, sometimes “making it through” is enough. 

Pain is unavoidable, but I’m starting to think the meaning is found in having the strength to move forward, the grit to get back up, and gratitude for being made into someone new.

Here’s to 2023.