a little positive for the new year......

by Hanne Blank

Happy New Year to you. I’m glad you made it.
I’m glad, because I know what that means.

It means that every time you thought “I can’t,” you figured out some way that you could. Oh, not a way that you could always do the exact thing that made you stop in your tracks and go “I can’t.”

Though sometimes you did exactly that, ’cause you’re that kind of rockstar badass.

No, you figured out some way you could get close enough for jazz. Or some way you could change the conversation, or finagle things so that something to which you could say “I can” could fit where the thing that made you say “I can’t” had been.

Some days that means that you just find somewhere to sit still and keep breathing while your world falls to ashes and the minutes pass.

Some days you do that with your eyes closed. Sometimes that’s what you can.

But you do it. You did it. Every time, all year, you did it, whatever it was.

You found “I can.”

You did it while you found out that the Beatles lied to you and love isn’t all you need. You did it while you bled and while you cried.

You did it while you wondered where the money was going to come from. You did it while you learned the hard way that a loss you choose is still a loss, not just the losses you didn’t choose.

You did it in line in bureaucratic offices and medical clinics and at the post office. You did it while you made an impossible decision. You did it when you were beyond caring. You did it when you cared so much that doing anything at all was terrifying.

You did it while you did things you knew were going to hurt. You did it while you hurt yourself, on purpose.

You did it while you were exhausted, while you absorbed that news, while you listened to that diagnosis, while you waited to hear something that would change things you weren’t going to be able to ever change back. You did it while you rode the train. You did it while you drove home. You did it while you dialed that phone number that time, and waited for “hello?”

You did it in the dark and you did it by your wits and you did it alone, because all of us ultimately do. You also did it in broad daylight and with the help and love and strong backs of others helping to make it possible, because all of us ultimately do that, too.

You did it the way only you know how. You did it. You found “I can.”

You did it as many times as necessary.

We both did.

Well played, my friend.

Thank you.

Happy New Year. May the worst day of the upcoming year be only as bad as the best day of the one just past, and may you always find the way to “I can.”