Reflections on the Decade

While it’s true, every decade accounts for the same amount of time, 10 years, this last decade somehow feels infinitely longer. Perhaps it’s because of all my decades, the time spanning between age 35-45 packed in so much significant change. 

NYE 2009

Ten years ago today, I held an ultrasound picture in one hand, astonished as I rubbed my burgeoning belly with the other. Sipping my decaf coffee, I began mentally preparing for that which you can never really prepare for - the wild ride of motherhood. Soon I’d be thrust into a brand new journey in which I would feel equal parts foreigner and completely at home.

Fast forward to today, on the last day of this decade, where I sit eating breakfast with the three small humans who call me Mom. That little black and white picture from a decade ago, the miracle with a beating heart, now sits across from me at age nine and a half, sipping his own decaf coffee and schooling me on high genetic vulnerability and how it contributes to the endangerment of animals. 

Meanwhile, my middle child, at eight, is asking me how babies come out of a mom’s belly. As I stumble through my response, my three year old spitfire adds to the conversation what is quite possibly, the longest toot I’ve ever heard, and we all erupt into a fit of laughter. 

This is my life. 

So much has changed in ten years. 

Of course, there are the obvious external changes. We added three kids to our family. We moved homes. Tom and I both started businesses. The boys set off to preschool, then elementary. We sat with friends through cancer journeys and funerals and job losses and the dissolution of marriages. Our friendships morphed and shifted as friends moved away, relationships grew apart, and new relationships were forged. Our house changed - filled with more clutter, grime, noise, and love. Our bodies changed. Oh, how our bodies have changed - rounder, softer, achier, and holding exponentially more life and stories than a decade ago.

But where I feel most different is on the inside, where the most notable changes have occurred, though the hardest to capture with words.

The inside. 

It’s where…

…I hold the grief of all that I’ve watched die - friends, family members, dreams, babies, and friendships. It’s where I lament missed opportunities and changes I never made. 

…I began the process of embracing my whole self, all the parts of my story.

…I started to make friends with my imperfections rather than try desperately to hide them away. But sometimes I still try.

…I shifted to a place of valuing the struggle, not just the victory.

…I began to feel at home in my body, and at the very same time, like a stranger in a strange land.

…my life grew more tamed while my heart sprung wings, more wild and free than its ever been.

…I lost my understanding of the world, slogging my way through to the discovery of a new way. 

…I experienced an awakening to injustice and the multitude of ways I’ve benefitted from my own privilege. 

…the words, sharing a table and building a bridge took root in my heart, casting hope onto the decade to come.

…I learned to hold complicated and seemingly opposing emotions and labored to embrace life’s abundant paradoxes.

…my worry over loss increased as my love for my family and friends grew.

…the strange became known and the known became strange and I longed for Love to come in and cover it all. 

…my irritability rose up like a tempest, gathering its strength from a sea of doubt and anger. 

…stress snuck up and quietly lodged itself in my body.

…I allowed myself to ponder the questions and pull on the threads of doubt with both faith and fear.

…I worked to own the insecurities, failures, and weaknesses, and to ask for forgiveness where I had wronged.

…curiosity was nurtured toward people I didn’t understand or agree with.

…I had many an argument with that pesky passenger, Imposter Syndrome, who tried to ride shotgun with me wherever I was going.

…I acknowledged feeling unmoored and also where my True North shown the most bright.

…the roots of my marriage stretched deeper in search of needed water, and grew stronger, even as they bumped into rocks along the way. 

August 2019

So much change has happened in the last decade. And I won’t pretend to say all of it is good. 

But change has a mind of its own. 

This is not where I thought I would be, and still, I’m grateful for the journey.

And as I reflect on this last decade, I no longer see myself as here or there, as an isolated freeze frame, capturing only one moment in time,  but rather as someone in process, as being and becoming; as ever-changing.

If today, on the eve of a new decade, you find yourself weary or wobbly, wondering or wandering, unhappy with where you’ve been or uncertain of where you’re going, be where you are. Keep working to own all the parts of your story, the obvious outside and the unseen inside. Posture yourself toward your source, your True North, and keep going - walking or running, treading or slogging or crawling - until you find your way home. 

But just know, there’s beauty in the becoming.

Here we come, 2020.