As I sat looking at my journaled year in review, I realized I had lost the thread of these annual posts sharing my intention word for the year, and how that played out in my personal life, crafting, and later, fiber arts teaching. I would love to say that all this is to blame on the pandemic, which would be true to an extent. More true would be that, in the past, I regularly neglected my own expression, creativity, and self-care whenever things got overwhelming; I’m sure you don’t need a background in mental health (or divination) to see how well that served me.
I started naming these intentions way back in 2014. The first year was about ‘enjoying what I had’ and most of those goals centered around crafting: working primarily from stash and limiting purchases, learning 2 new knitting techniques, and working toward an ambitious goal of 20,000 yards in finished objects.
2015 brought a dedication of energy to ‘more of what makes me happy’. These goals included personal, health, and crafting goals. The implicit goal was if I focused on what brought me happiness, there would be less room for things that hurt me.
After my physical health continued to deteriorate, culminating in chronic diagnoses in late 2015, 2016 was firmly focused on ‘self-care’. I shifted my crafting goals to an emphasis on my craft serving all aspects of my health, not the other way around; and I finally met that 20,000 yard goal! It was a busy year, with lots of big changes, firmly rooted in hope.
The intention for 2017 became to maintain the progress of the previous years. Channeling one of my most beloved professors from undergrad, I used her refrain of “Maintain your groovy selves!” as my reminder to keep seeking the happy and healthy I’d found, and hoped to deepen in the year to come.
Many times in my life, I’ve found that achieving the thing isn’t actually the challenge it is portrayed as being; sustaining the thing is actually much harder, takes more resources, and requires more conviction. After sifting through a list of words, I settled on ‘sustain’ for 2018 and it really served me.
Several years into doing the work in therapy, 2019 became the year to ‘release’. To quote a wise songwriter, “I keep my side of the street clean” and I had much to unburden as I realized the weight I was carrying that wasn’t mine. That space beautifully filled with creativity, fulfillment, and a momentum I hadn’t felt in nearly a decade.
All that growth culminated in a passionate dedication to the idea that I would spend 2020 celebrating my weirdness, giving myself permission to be ‘wonderfully weird’ and rejecting anything that didn’t align with that passion. Very quickly (too quickly to even draft an outline to post about it, actually), I was desperately sick with what we would later learn was covid-19. I spent over 2 weeks in bed, and then a month dragging my barely-reanimated self around, trying to resume life with what would later be called long covid. About the time I felt like a glimmer of my former self, our state went into lockdown. Everything changed. All energy went to navigating these unprecedented times without regressing. Personal growth and creativity moved to the back burner.
The upside of essentially being in lockdown for over 1000 days is that I’ve spent so little time around groups of people, I have basically unlearned my subconscious performative skill set. Of course, I still know how to act with decorum, but I choose when that’s actually necessary.
Still reeling in the unknown of living through a pandemic with no real leadership from our country’s highest health leaders, I had no expectations for 2021. My biggest hope was to go no-contact with the serial abuser who had occupied The White House for the last 4 years (I still hope for this). 2021 brought relentless waves of grief: for our country, then for me, for my husband, for our future. As I pulled out my journals from 2022, I flipped past my handwritten reflections from 2021. It opened with a question: “How many times can I say ‘that was a lot’?” The answer was a list: tears, anxiety, rage, frustration, sadness, loneliness, despair, disappointment, googling, dashed hopes, surrender. It would seem 2021 was the year I learned the reality of radical acceptance and how deep that goes. Radical acceptance was the only option I had in many circumstances, and I continue to learn this more deeply every day.
I tried to return to my annual exercise of choosing a word for the year for 2022. I never wrote it down. I never told anyone. The most I could muster was looking up the definition and leaving the tab open on my phone’s browser. I found it open several times, and contemplated closing it, but never did.
Calm (noun)
Merriam-Webster online
1.a.: a period or condition of freedom from storms, high winds, or rough activity of water
2.: a state of tranquility
As I reviewed my journal entries from 2022, I saw wishes for calm and self-care, month over month, more than anything else. As I read through struggles with my extended confinement, my mental health (due in part to my extended confinement), my rare allergy, and continued issues from the 10-year old TBI, major and costly repairs on both cars, I realized I wished for calm not because I thought all these things would or could go away, but because I needed to learn how to find the calm in the midst of these storms, high winds and rough water.
I struggled in so many ways, and poured that out onto the page (and to my therapist – shout out to therapists! – everyone should have one). I also saw the repeated ways I reached for comfort, calm and stillness in the ways I still have available to me. Reading, writing, spending time in nature with my dog, and feeling yarn running through my hands all played prominently. I leaned into the idea of comfort media, as well. Whether it was revisiting the comfort of my favorite TV & movies or body doubling with podcasts and YouTube, I allowed people I’ve never met help me feel a little less alone.
I found calm in pauses, in the trees, in deep breaths, in the eyes of my dog, in the purring of a black cat, in candlelight, in wool, in embraces, and in radical acceptance. And I love that journey for me.
Donita Westman 