All of my best decisions came about as New Year's Resolutions, in some weird fashion.
In the fall of 1999, Andrew asked me to marry him. We wanted a June wedding and felt that we just wouldn't have time to get things together and set our date for 2001. However, once the holidays were over, we opted to change our plans and on January 1st 2000, we made the decision o do whatever we needed to to get married that year and so we were married on June 10th, 2000. One of the hottest days on record, 90 degrees before noon.
On September 11, 2001 the world became a horrible place for our nation. Just prior to that day, as a couple we had decided we needed to change our fortune in order to start a family. I turned in my application to attend nursing school, we had a plan. The months following the attack though put the world in sharper relief for us. On January 1st, 2002 we decided that we did not want to wait until after nursing school to start a family. No one would use terror to keep us from finding love and bringing more love into the world. It was clear to us that if the world needed something, it was more love. Our first child, Kate, was born January 3, 2003.
I finished nursing school and started my new job as a nurse. I knew if Kate was going to have any siblings, we needed to address that soon. On January 1, 2006, in keeping with our incredibly good track record we came together as a family and once again called upon the Spirit of the New Year to bring us a blessing, we resolved to add more love to our lives. After a very difficult pregnancy, Thomas joined our family and shared a birthday with Andrew on Spetember 29, 2006.
Many years have passed and I have not much thought about New Year's Resolutions. I don't seek to lose weight or stop cussing or give up smoking. Long ago I came to the place where I love myself to the best of my ability and accept my faults with as much grace as I can muster. However, this year is different. The past few years have been very difficult and I have battled Depression and Anxiety. I have spent many hours talking with my therapist, accepted my body's inability to function properly and been on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications for two years longer than I wanted to be. When I last tried to go off my medications, I weaned myself but the side effects were terrible. I have never once considered ending my own life until I was 40 years old and going through withdrawal. I had not choice, I resumed my meds at higher doses for my own sanity.
Now I stand at a place where I have a beautiful family, a job I enjoy and this coming year holds something that the last few years have not - a clear sense of great opportunity waiting to be taken, held and called my own. I want this and I want it on my terms. I have been weaning myself again, much slower this time and there have been no side effects. I am ready to take the next step, to reduce my meds below any amount I have ever been at before. I had decided to wait until after the holidays and then realized the perfect moment was about to present itself.
This year I will be making my first real New Year's Resolution in 8 years. This year I resolve to become fully myself again and to go forward into the new year as the best person I can be. Each Resolution in the past brought with it the birth of a new creation, a married couple and two children. This year it will be my re-birth if you will. While I know it sounds overly dramatic (and if you know me, I know drama), it is something that I owe myself and my family. I need to break free from what has kept me down and I need to be fully in this world. There's a lot of work to be done and I need to get to it.
Happy New Year's everyone.
