In My End is My Beginning

In T.S. Eliot's "Four Quarters" he writes: 

What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning.

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I don't know who decided that there was anything special about the clock rolling over into a new year; why, as humans, we celebrate the passage of time in this way, as if getting one step closer to the inevitable end of life as we know it was something to be excited about. But, as far as rituals go, this shedding off of the old and invitation to the new seems to surpass all things: religion, language, culture, location, there is no barrier really. Around the world, humans inhale this fresh start, this beginning again, and exhale the year they want to leave behind in one huge collective sigh. We send that which we want to forget and/or celebrate up into the air, in bursts of light and color and crackling thunder, and we enthusiastically toast to the hope for something better on the horizon. It is as beautiful as it is bonkers. 

Personally, today is a very mixed bag. It marks the end of a very difficult year, inviting the hopefulness and excitement (and if we are perfectly honest, anxiety) that comes with the opportunity to begin again, albeit unsought. It also marks the day that I met my former life: 27 years of knowing the person I thought would be my forever. I come to this place with the same heart and soul and even slight dose of skeptical optimism as I did 27 years ago. Outside of the five kids, the biggest difference is the intermittent joint pain and oh, the wrinkles. (My grandma called them her trophies of a life well lived. I am not ready to concede that just yet but I do hold out hope that I will end with laugh lines that outweigh the sorrow.) 

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In my beginning is my end. In succession

Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.

Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, 

Old fires to ashes, and ashes to earth

Which is already flesh, fur and faeces. 

Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.

Houses live and die: there is a time for building

And a time for living and for generation

And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane

And to shake the wainscot where the field mouse trots

And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto.

    In my beginning is my end. 

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As our house has crumbled and we work to rebuild from the ashes once disguised as hope and promise, I have come to see the intersection of beginning and end, end and beginning, as one. They are merged into unity and I begin to understand that this turning over of the new year is simply part of that union. As the wind shakes loose all the broken dreams and we continue to show up, sweep up, build back up, perhaps a bit more tattered and worn than before, I understand T.S. Eliot:

To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not, 
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstacy. 
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by the way which is the way of ignorance. 
In order to possess which you do not possess, 
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not

You must go through the way in which you are not

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Today is so simple. And painful. And hopeful. And sad and exciting and every other big feeling rolled up into an enormous emotional sushi roll. And instead of dissecting it into its individual parts, I am embracing the way they mingle and mix to create this crazy, nuanced, lively existence. In order to arrive at what I am not, I MUST go through a way in which I am not. 2025 has been very much that 'way'.  

Like it or not, this year was a year for learning. I learned about cognitive dissonance. I learned to reside there, to sit with the discomfort, to lean into it. I learned to ride a zero-turn (super fun), to paint walls (albeit poorly), to painstakingly choose my own colors, and furniture and decor. I learned to fix things and ask for help and accept the loving support of those close to me; to make choices and mistakes and financial decisions, and more mistakes, and I learned to bounce back up each time ready for the next best thing. I learned that what I had once considered to be a character flaw - my sometimes loosy goosy lack of clear hard fast opinions or feelings on so many things, the seemingly chameleon-like quality of seeing things as "both/and" or "it depends" (not some rigid black/white) - was actually healthy and that this dialectical thinking and acceptance of the coexistence of opposites operating around and within us simultaneously, could be exactly the balm to heal my tender wounded heart:

I can delight in the freedom to be my full self while also mourn the loss of my former life. I can both genuinely long for the comfort of the life I was formerly living and appreciate the dissolution of the life that is no longer mine to live. I can miss the person I chose to spend my life with, even find myself wishing for things to turn back around, and still be thankful for a home free of anger, rage, trauma and fear. I can rejoice in my freedom and awakening and weep over the excruciating loss. I can experience love, so much love, and still be alone. I can be alone and also relieved. 

This paradox of life has always stood out to me: highs and lows happening in tandem. In the depths of the harsh darkness, the light has been with me as well: Grief and joy walking hand in hand. 

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A friend asked me this week what would make me happy this coming year. I didn't think too long. The thing is, I have always been happy. It is my default. Like others, the full range of emotions is readily available to me; fleeting moments of frustration, anger, disappointment, fear, anxiety (oh how she sometimes makes herself too comfy) and all the others we don't like to linger too long with as well as all those we celebrate and crave. Through it all, the access to joy has never been extinguished. My natural state leans toward happiness. The lowest moments this year, the days I could barely catch my breath through the weeping, were met by gentleness and eventually made way for calm and peace and suddenly, as if it had been watching and waiting, joy. 

This year I learned that I can be both sad and happy. At the EXACT. SAME. TIME. (Seriously. What the actual....) I found that I can delight in all that I am grateful for while holding space for all that hurts. It can all be true. All at the same time. True. And freeing. And utterly exhausting. 

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I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre, 
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away ---

The lights are out. 2025 has rumbled its wings. And just like that, the scene is changed and the facade has been rolled away. Enter 2026. 

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I am here, or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning. 

Becoming

I dream of peace
Above all else
To share a world where we could be ourselves
We must learn to rise above the past
Before we can at last 

Begin again 

-Dream Theater

When I was 21 years old, I wrote this excerpt about becoming:

"I was not born a woman, as you were not born a man. These qualities of life have been granted us after long hours and experiences spent developing who we are, inside and out. And now, by being alone, we find that we are our "better half". It is so often assumed that a significant other fills that role in our make up. Now we know it is right there within ourselves and a lot closer than we ever imagined. We come to realize that not only are we worthy of being loved and cherished, but that this treatment must begin within us. We must first love ourselves and hold onto what is good about our own lives before we can step out and allow others to love us; before we can really love in return...."  

I wish I could hug the sweet child (dressed like an adult, kind of) that I was then. Apparently and unbeknownst to me, I was writing to my future broken self and entirely unaware that using the phrase "qualities of life" to describe becoming gendered would cause 48 year old me to face palm a bit too hard. Little did I know that the act of becoming isn't some linear journey with a beginning brimming with enthusiasm, a structured, electrified middle and a glorious final destination of pure delight and wholeness. You don't just grow up and magically stop "becoming" as if you've arrived at some static place of self where you live happily ever after for all the rest of your days exactly the same person forever and ever, amen. (I think I just barfed a little.) No, no. The thing is, we are continually becoming who we are. And every twist and turn in the road leads us to new understandings of our authentic selves, of who we want to be and how we want to show up in the world. And, news flash, sometimes we suck at this. We fail to be our best selves, we show up poorly, we act out of character, we judge, we condemn, we fight growth (it's not comfortable), we fight change (it's hard), we complain, we check out, we become dismayed or scornful, pointing fingers because why isn't everyone a little better than they are today and for the love of God, we cannot believe that other driver just cut us off ARE YOU EFFING KIDDING ME "USE YOUR TURN SIGNAL BUDDY"....we try and try and try but we are just, so, damn, human. 

And sometimes, it's downright exhausting. We are repeatedly challenged by the curve balls, bricks and boulders thrown our way; and just when we are swathed in a dulling cozy comfort that leads us into the temptation of believing we have arrived and have nothing left to do on the subject, we are pushed to our limits, brought to our knees, praying for a strength we wish we didn't need all while being shattered into a kaleidoscopic version of ourselves we hardly recognize through the blinding pain.  

And then, life, ooooh life, has the audacity of throwing us a bone, flashing a glimmer of joy and beauty and grace, giving us hope, a tiny ray of light, like maybe we stand a chance....

And that was just yesterday. Today we rise again. Our own personal phoenix tale. Round and round the circle she goes, where she stops, nobody knows....(but she's likely tired and maybe a little cranky so tread lightly.) 

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As we find ourselves in this season of advent, may we let go of the past year, of who we thought we were and who we tried to be and maybe even who we imagine we are becoming, (you know, all that mushy middle stuff), in order to make room for beginning again.