​​​​​Oh, what a year this has been. I can’t believe this is my last email for 2020. I swear each day has felt like it was a week-long and my head is also spinning, trying to accept it’s actually the end of December.

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve actually begun to wrap my mind around the changes that I’ve walked through this year and if I’m being REALLY honest, I‘m also probably in denial about the enormity of most of them.

Funny enough, I was talking with my husband the other morning about all that has changed. All that has been lost. All that has become different. And I told him (in a very grounded therapist voice) that I can’t even look at all of the changes out there at one time as the intensity of it all is too much. I promise this is not as unhealthy as this sounds.

I need just enough denial to keep it together.

And not because I’m on the edge of losing it (not this week at least) but because I need to continue to choose happiness.

I need to hold space for all the hard, all the loss, and all the pain AND also know that happiness still exists. That the overwhelming conflict between good and bad can exist inside of me and that, when faced with the choice of seeing the glass half full or half empty, I choose half full. I can have so much empathy for the glass wanting to be full and only being halfway there. I can have so much passion for wanting it to be all the way full and be committed to working tirelessly to get it there AND I can still be glad that at least half full exists.

I am not a person that sugar coats or pulls the wool over your eyes. I’m just a person that believes, deep down in her soul, in the AND. The dark AND the light. The heavy AND the ease. The burden AND the blessing.

There are some days I can easily go into the light and other days where I need to swim in the dark before I can find the shore. And it’s all ok. It’s uncomfortable, yes… and it’s ok. You’re ok. I can’t wrap my mind around all that you’ve walked through this year and yet I still believe that you’re responsible for your own happiness. For your outlook. For your AND. You can’t make that anyone’s responsibility, especially your partner’s. You have the ability to hold the heavy AND the light and to know that they can both exist, even when it feels like the scales are tipped against you.

​My wish for you as this hell of a year comes to a close, is that you’re able to know that both the good AND the bad can live in the same space and you can choose to see the hope, the joy, and the happy in the half-full.

Until next year,

-A

P.S. If you’re ready to lighten the load and release past hurt and pain, especially in love… please reach out… I’m here to support you.