Dear 2017

We take turns writing this blog every week and when it’s my turn I tend to struggle. Writers block if you will. However, today as I sat down to write this all I could think about was 2018. As the weeks quickly pass us by, my thoughts are focused on the coming year. 2017 has provided me many challenges and changes for me personally. I have struggled to balance being a single mother and working full time. Quite frankly, holding it all together and being a good mother while my heart was breaking has been the biggest challenge of all. So I decided to write a letter to the year that’s quickly coming to an end. Here goes.

Dear 2017,

I admire you. Not for the way you built me up or gave me exactly what I thought I wanted then took it away, like pulling a rug right out from beneath me, but for the way that you broke me down and surrendered me to what you knew I needed. I thought for months you were trying to destroy me but I am learning now that you were actually building me, constructing me to be what I am supposed to be. Stronger. You exposed the very parts of me I never wanted to show and made me vulnerable to an audience that I was not prepared for. I hated you, despised you, and I was pained at the very thought of one more day, minute, second of you. Unaware of how I would make it through and disappointed at the thought of it because every day was another step away from the person I was, the person I thought that I wanted to be, towards the person that I am, the person I am still becoming, the person I am yet to be.

2017, you have been the year of letting go. Letting go of the love I thought I deserved and needed, letting go of people I thought I couldn’t go a day without, and letting go of the future I had so passionately planned for. But in letting go I have also found so many things worth holding on to. Not just things, but people, values, and the openness of starting anew. Holding on to the thought that starting over is not always a bad thing, that change can be healthy, that what you thought was perfect only was “perfect” up close. Holding on to the idea that once you can step away from something or someone that only then do you see the flaws and the imperfections.

2017, I do not despise you, nor do I hate you. In fact I needed you. As you have made me proud to be standing here, humbled with knowledge that nothing lasts forever, not love, not people, and most importantly not pain. I am proud that I get the opportunity to see another day, another year, to possibly take another trip around the sun, whereas so many others will not. I am grateful for the 365 days that you have blessed me with. The people you sent into my life, the courage you have given me, the strength I have found when I thought I had none and the encouragement to be exactly who I am supposed to become.

Dear 2018, I’m ready.