2020 Wasn't Great. Here's What I Learned.

2020: what a year. I think its natural at the end of any year to spend time reflecting on what it has taught us, and how we might take these lessons into the next. In some ways, many of us probably want to skip that step and just run into 2021 like this year never happened. I can’t imagine anyone would consider 2020 even an acceptable year, let alone a good one. We have experienced and witnessed suffering on a scale most of us couldn’t have even begun to imagine previously. In vast and minute ways, our lives have been altered and scarred by sickness, death, loneliness, injustices, and despair. There’s no way around that truth. 

There is, I think, also much to learn from what my daughter angrily describes as “20POOPY”. On a large scale, there are a multitude of lessons about how we treat others, how we manage illness, how we pick our leaders and the impact those decisions have. They are important ideas to think about, about how we exist in the world and how we show up for each other and those that need support. We also were forced to make our worlds much smaller this year, to go inward and hunker down, to cling to the small and beautiful parts of our lives that we may have been ignoring before. 

I can’t tell you what to take with you from this year, though I have some suggestions for our leaders. But I can share the lessons that I’ve learned, the ones I’m taking with me in hopes that I will be better prepared for what lies ahead in the unknown of 2021 and beyond. So here are some of my 2020 learned lessons, for what it’s worth:

Being in the moment actually works. This is something I’ve struggled with my whole life. I’m what my parents always called “a worrier”, meaning I have anxiety (particularly medical anxiety which was perfect for this year) and my mind goes a mile a minute. I have, for years, attempted to meditate and be in the moment with varying degrees of success. When the pandemic hit, my anxiety went into full gear and I had a choice: live in the moment or completely fall apart. So, I finally began noticing the feel of the water on my hands when I washed dishes, I started focusing on the taste of my food, I paid deep attention to the sounds of my kids laughing. And I learned that, just like I’d always been told, it actually helped reduce my anxiety. Go figure. 

I have very little control over anything (and that’s not a bad thing). As a person with anxiety and with a pretty extensive trauma history, I have a tendency to want to control everything. I like to plan plan plan, I like to make sure I know what is happening today, tomorrow, and five years from now. Until 2020, I was doing a pretty good job of convincing myself that I actually had control over these things. But when the world shuts down because of an invisible monster that you can’t see or touch, and the best thing you can do is to do nothing and stay home, you quickly begin to realize that the control you thought you had over your life was made of cardboard, and easily taken apart. At first it made me feel like I couldn’t breathe, but the more I delved into it the more I started to see this realization as freeing. I actually cannot control my future; I can’t control what happens in the world. I can control what I am doing right now. I can control my breathing. I can control my words, my actions, my intentions, and my perceptions. I can control only myself and how I interact with the world. And when I really think about it, that gives me an immense amount of peace. So, when the world feels like too much, I remind myself what I can and cannot control, and I make decisions from there. When you accept responsibility for yourself, but not for what others do or what the world does to you, then you can let go of the impossible feat of trying to control the universe. 

Parents and kids need a village. I already knew this, but now I really know this. Having to entertain just two children all day has been exhausting and overwhelming. Knowing that it is your responsibility to make sure they learn and stay engaged and get enough exercise and don’t look at too many screens (but they have to learn on screens) and everything else we’ve had to do this year makes me realize how much I’ve leaned on others to help raise these kids. They had teachers to teach and guide them, friends to help them expand and grow, family to play with and love on them, and we had our family and friends to give us support along the way. Being a mom already felt almost impossible before the pandemic, and then it felt like moving a mountain. I will never, I hope, stop appreciating the village my children get to grow up in (as soon as we’re actually able to be with that village again). Also, we really need to pay teachers more. Seriously. 

I’m a lot stronger than I imagined. I don’t know anyone who wasn’t challenged in 2020. We all had our different struggles and breakdowns, how could we not?! I sure did. But in the midst of fear and sickness and the world changing around me, I managed to pull myself through and actually grow this year. If all we did over the last 12 months was to survive, that is more than enough. If we faltered, if we fell, if we had to break all the way down and start again, how could anyone blame us? I found ways to survive, I even found ways to grow and thrive, pandemic and all. I decided to challenge myself to not give up, to see the best in myself, and to move from there. I learned that I can get through a lot more than I ever gave myself credit for, and I believe with all my heart that you can too.

We all need each other. We need that village I mentioned. We rely on each other’s decisions to keep us safe. We rely on each other to stand up and speak out when people are being oppressed and mistreated. We rely on each other to make healthy and informed choices about how we live in the world. We rely on each other for a phone call when we’re faltering, for a zoom when we’re lonely. There are so many ways to be there for each other, even when we are forced to be apart. Again, this isn’t something I didn’t know before, but I feel it so deeply and intensely now. We are all connected, and we cannot escape our reliance on and duty to one another, nor should we. Though it can fill me with rage when people make choices that put us in danger, I can also be filled with awe at the ways in which people put themselves on the line for one another. We’ve witnessed healthcare workers risk everything to care for us, essential workers go out every day to keep us going, protesters risk bodily harm to fight for what is right, people every day in every place love their neighbor as their own. Yes, we’ve watched selfishness and ignorance too, and we are allowed to feel anger and despair at that. But when I see the lengths to which humans will go in order to help one another, I can’t help but be filled with a little bit of hope. 

A couple of other things I learned are:

·      Kids can spend the whole day in pajamas and that’s really ok. So can I.

·      I was not built to be a homeschool mom.

·      We can all agree that lounge pants are the only acceptable pants and get rid of button-fly forever. 

·      Dancing every day keeps my anxiety at bay. 

·      I need to read and grow my mind every day.

·      My husband is apparently an amazing sourdough baker (which is great since I can’t eat gluten). 

·      Being outside is key.

·      Wearing a mask isn’t difficult at all, even for a three-year-old. 

·      Voting matters.

So, there it is, a bit of reflection on 2020 from me. It was not a great year, to say the least. I hope against hope that 2021 will be better, and that none of us will forget the lessons that 2020 has taught us so that we never have to live a year like this again. 

I wish you and yours all of the blessings and love a new year can bring.

As my daughter, the six-year-old sage says, “goodbye poo-year, hello new year!”