Welcome 2021

As we enter this new year, one can’t help but think about the pandemic 2020. The year Earth stops to reset itself in the midst of a Covid-19 pandemic.

Looking at a retrospective the other day, it was hard to believe the devastating fires in Australia also happened in 2020 – it seems like ages ago, so deep and long and devastating 2020 was.

A few major things happened in my life in 2020:

• It was the year we moved from Canmore, AB, to Vernon, BC. A fundamental move in our lives, after over 15 years in Alberta and a dozen years in the Bow Valley, a place where my husband passed away, 8 years ago, and my son lived his whole life. This move was one of the best things we did in 2020!
• In 2020, I fell in love with a woman! We started talking, met, dated, got engaged and moved in together throughout the year. And, because of her, I ended up spending time up north in BC, which was very interesting and something I never envisioned happening.
• My kombucha business, which I created from scratch almost three years ago, came to an agonizing end. The company still exists but it is nothing like my vision. This process was long and painful and I still have to go through the grieving process of something I put so much effort and money into.
• I went back to school and started studying to become not only a life coach but starting the process of becoming a counselor as well. At 51, going back to school was refreshing and exciting. Seeing my interest growing with new information and a full class of new friends and challenging situations made me feel very alive.

Closing 2020 and opening 2021 made me think of a Portuguese poem that I reproduced below. The idea of ‘cutting the time into pieces’ and industrializing the hope is something that comes to mind at the beginning of each new year since I first read this poem. We have 12 months to deal with it – and 12 months is enough to get tired of it and give up. But then the ‘renovation miracle’ comes when we simply change some numbers and start all over again, believing that this time it will be different…

Happy New Year!

Quem teve a ideia de cortar o tempo em fatias,
a que se deu o nome de ano,
foi um indivíduo genial.
Industrializou a esperança
fazendo-a funcionar no limite da exaustão.

Doze meses dão para qualquer ser humano
se cansar e entregar os pontos.
Aí entra o milagre da renovação e tudo começa outra vez
com outro número e outra vontade de acreditar
que daqui pra adiante vai ser diferente

Roberto Pompeu de Toledo