2021 is finally coming to an end… and what a year it was. Unlike 2020, where my entire world fell apart, 2021 was the year of rebuilding. It was the year where I took control and leaned into the brokenness that surrounded me. I’m the type of human that always wants to have a plan– at least a rough draft. 2021, I had no plan and decided to feel my way through each and every situation that crossed my path. It was uncomfortable; it is uncomfortable.
This year I walked away from friendships I’ve had my entire life because the relationships no longer brought joy into my life. I said no to things I didn’t want to do because I’m no longer going to let shame and fear guilt me into meeting anyones expectation or standard for how they think I should be. I learned that it’s more exhausting to change the way I am to meet other people’s needs than to be honest and advocate for my own.
This year I chose relationships over my career… and ended up arriving in the exact place I was meant to be. And against months of trying to fight it and deny it, I fell in love with someone who is truly my best friend. I get to be me and that is enough, finally.
This year I chose to define home as my home…and it took me 30 years to admit where my home was. In fact, I spent so much of my life searching for home only to end up exactly where I started and deciding to stay. This year I chose me– like the real, real, real me.
2021 was still hard. All of it was hard. It was full of healing, advocating for myself, and advocating for others. It was full of chapters ending and new chapters beginning… all while in the middle of a pandemic… and not the pandemic we’ve been in for years that no one is addressing, a political pandemic… not a human one. We can disagree on that but the lack of kindness, humanity, and empathy in our society is the greatest pandemic of all… yet continues to be invisible to people of power and decision makers. Mental health matters too. And although being forced to get vaccinated, aka being forced to have drugs put in my body, again, I complied and while it re-triggered me in the process… I made it through.
This year I taught again. I stepped foot in a classroom, again. And that classroom ended up being mine, it’s ours. Luke held down the fort for 3 years prior… while I was learning what I needed to learn. I think back to that moment back in January when I saw the notification pop up that I had a voicemail from Luke asking me to sub. I had no idea that phone call would change my life in so many ways. Sitting in a classroom at my high school and getting the phone call that I was offered the self-contained behavior classroom was one of the happiest moments in my life. It meant I was home, it meant I was believed in, and it meant I was healed enough to teach again.
One of my hopes for 2022 is that our world starts looking at the root causes of mental health– unhealed trauma. I hope people in power pay more attention to ending the causes of trauma instead of inflicting more of it on our communities and our children. The fact the media would rather share stories of COVID than human sex trafficking and poverty is living proof they benefit from the cycles of abuse and unhealed trauma… as COVID has done nothing but ignite fear, not reality into our homes. “We are all in this together” to try to stop the spread of COVID… but why are we not “all in this together” to stop the spread of trauma? Why aren’t we loving each other? Why aren’t we showing grace to each other and building each other up? Why are we shaming each other? Why are we choosing sides? Why do we allow politics to divide us? Why do we allow politics to erase our stories and replace our narratives with messages of the mainstream agenda? Our collective trauma from the fear of COVID will outlast the actual damage caused by COVID. Pile that on top of all of our prior trauma and trauma of being human… it’s time we join together in acceptance, unity, and love, or our country, our world is in danger.
Politicians are meant to represent the voice of the people, not their voice… or the voice that will bring them the most personal benefit. As teachers we wonder why behavior is so bad– have you seen the hate spread on every single media news outlet by the people leading our country? By celebrities? My Athletes? We need more purple people. We need more balance. We need more people willing to say they disagree because they have lived different experiences but they still agree to be respectful and kind. I hope 2022 brings balance and acceptance back into our world. We are stronger together than we are divided. Right now we are divided.
2021 taught me to heartily accept people who have similar views as me and different. Acceptance doesn’t mean you have to be friends with every one… but it doesn’t mean you have to be enemies either. It should mean accepting each human as they are and working with people, not against. However, one of the greatest lessons of 2021 is to accept that if people would rather work against me for the sake of hurting me, those are not conversations I no longer need to engage with. We keep hearing impact is more important than intent… but I don’t agree. Intent is equal to impact. I can’t control the way you perceive what I’m saying and for a message to passed around social media like we have any control over that is bananas. When we are impacted by the statements of others– that is unhealed trauma. Other people aren’t in control over the efforts we put into heal, only we are.
Teachers, and well the majority of people, joke all the time about having mental breakdowns. I actually had one. I was institutionalized in 2020. That was where they told me I needed to be realistic about my life and with my disorder, I wouldn’t be teaching again. Doctors do not understand post-traumatic stress disorder and in my life that is a fact. Hypervigilance looks a lot like schizophrenia when you don’t understand PTSD. While I still feel some side effects of having PTSD, I no longer meet official criteria and haven’t for over a year. I only have ADD. The experience of being institutionalized against my will is now a part of my story and a part of my 2021 learning– doctors are humans and can be wrong too. I choose to give those doctors grace because how do you know if you don’t know… but it’s up to them to learn…. but it’s not up to you all to walk on eggshells to not offend the experiences of mine that you know nothing about. And now that you do, you get to choose how you use the language and know I’m not judging you when you do. I understand it’s been conditioned in society and to change the way we use language takes time. It also takes practice, and errors, and having hard conversations, all mixed in with a lot of grace. While those statements mean nothing to me, I know they hurt others. For the others the statements still hurt, I wish you healing.
At the end of the day, only we are in charge of the impact the words of others have on us. This isn’t to say things don’t need to change because it does impact people’s mental health… but equally so does shaming others. Compassionate conversations is always the way to go in my opinion. I have chosen to heal these parts of my life and have found the meaning within this experience to feel peace… and at this moment, this experience isn’t the hill I have chosen to shout justice from the top of. I have chosen to focus on the reason that led me to being so traumatized– whistleblower retaliation and ongoing emotional abuse from people in power. I have also chosen to show grace to those who haven’t had my experiences and recognize every one has a different reaction to these phrases based off their own story. Our stories is what makes life so unique; each of us really are on our own journey… and I honor your journey.
And on that note– I hope 2021 brought you a lot of reflection and you can take your growth and your learning into 2022 and make it the best year for you and those you love, given the current constraints of the world. We have way more power over our lives than it feels sometimes. Mind over matter is real... but love is the strongest element of them all. A world lacking love is a world lacking hope. We need to bring hope back, therefore we need to bring back love.
with kindness | ashley
Photography by the INCREDIBLE Haley Nicole.
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