A decade of difference
I’ve seen several “2016-2026” posts and ruminations online and in my inbox these last few weeks of January but the trend really hasn’t drawn me in. On somebody’s post about it, I commented that I found it difficult to “go back” to 2016 and reflect on the past decade because Annie was alive for most of those years and I thought it would be too hard.
I still do.
It feels like I’m coming to the other side of a grief forest that sprung up around me during the holidays. I expended a lot of energy being “intentional” about celebrating Christmas for my family and I was anticipating Annie’s birthday on January 17th hard. This forest, often dark and lonely, but also with occasional sunny glades and birds flitting from tree to tree, is a familiar one. It’s like Brigadoon, appearing out of nowhere, but without the singing and the Scottish accents. And it shows up more often.
That’s what grief is like for me—unreliable. I’ll have days of wide open fields of wildflowers and blue skies and then that forest will pop up. Other days it’s trying to navigate getting from one side of a rushing stream to the other, picking my way across stones and fallen logs without getting swept away. Or it’s a dense fog that envelops me and drives me into my recliner under a blanket. (The same blue blanket Annie bought me after my lumpectomy.) And there’s no telling when each one shows up or how long it will stay.
But in the interest of social media solidarity, I offer a previous reflection on a different decade. I wrote it to launch this Substack five years ago as a way to share where I’d been and where I hoped to be going. Five years later, it looks differently than I imagined, but it’s hard to deny that I’ve been given many gifts in my life. I just don’t always feel like opening them all the time.
I’m not out of the woods, yet.
OR…buy some books?
Want me to show up at your book club or speaking event? (With your knowledge, of course…I won’t just show up!)
Thanks so much for being here. That in itself is huge and I appreciate it. ♥️
The grief forest metaphor captures something most explainer language misses. That unpredictability, where sunny glades and dense fog alternate without warning, is exactly how it works. The blanket detail adds a layer I wasn't expecting. Sometimes the tangible objects hold more weight than the abstract timelines everyone wants us to fit into.
P.S. The sky is pink right now!