Happy New Year!!! It’s 2021 and we’ve survived 2020.

How do we do the past year justice though? While we’ve all been waiting to leave it behind and start fresh, so much has happened that can’t be just swept away. And the challenges we faced are still around – after all, the date doesn’t affect the virus, and the pandemic continues to rule our way of life.

For us, 2020 started in the most spectacular way. We found ourselves in Nashville, after 23 years off the competitive dance floor, reclaiming the world champion title in the UCWDC’s World Championship team division. And we killed it. We really did. We loved every second of it, and to this day I hear the crowd, the applause, and see the standing ovation. I’d missed that feeling. And that could hardly be seen as foreshadowing of what was to come only three months later. 

In March, as we all know, the world shut down. I was sent home to work remotely (something that would have never happened before!) And the timing was just right. The pandemic took hold of everything and sent us into lockdown – and sent some into frenzied toilet paper, sanitizer and canned goods overbuying – and the kids and I went home. Well, one of my kids had already been home unable to make it into school, as most of you already know. I was able to focus on her more and help her get through the months that would come, struggle with her to get the work done, and limp with her to the finish line of 8^th grade graduation. Getting furloughed on June 1^st could have been a terrible blow, but instead it was a considerable blessing.

Things got canceled. The senior class of 2020 was robbed of every end-of-school tradition and many a graduation. Our 8^th graders saw their trips, dances, and other traditions go out the window. And yet, selfish as this is to say, my kid all of the sudden didn’t have to miss those things she’d looked forward to for a long time, she didn’t have to cancel all those plans she’d made and watch her hopes and wishes leave her behind. While most kids suffered greatly from the emotional toll this all took on them (and justifiably so), mine found relief and an easing in her daily list of things she couldn’t face or achieve. 

During all this, I was at peace. I had faith that things would work out. I had planned to spend the newly-found time on my hands helping my husband, but alas, as most of you would have (and probably did) predicted, that didn’t last long and our marriage is better off for us having given up on it. He put all his energy into work and made up for my loss of income, even through the brief interruption during which he dealt with COVID. Again, we were lucky, as he had mild symptoms and was back on his feet in 10 days. He’s had some minor cognitive issues that are resolving themselves, but nothing that impairs his ability to work or be effective and generally awesome as he usually is in his work. Nothing can get this guy down, especially when he puts his mind to it and when his family depends on him.

2020 was a shitty year. And it was a good year too. There was loss and there was gain. There was grief and there was rejoicing. There were canceled plans and there was more time with family focusing on what truly matters. 

Having a teenager with major depressive disorder is hard, heart-wrenching, and exhausting a lot of the time. God, as you might have heard, has a sense of humor and way more faith in us than we ever seem to have in Him. Well, in His infinite wisdom, and apparently thinking that I am made of far sterner stuff than I think I’m made of, he decided to send us another one. In September, I got custody of my 14-year-old niece, and shortly after I got guardianship. She has been living with us since then, and now we have three girls under one roof (did I mention I always planned to have no more than two children?) It’s a long and convoluted story involving too many stories I don’t want to share this publicly, mostly because they’re not mine to share. Suffice it to say that her depression is mostly situational, and thus living with us has helped improve that greatly. She is my brother’s daughter and had been living with her mom since my brother went back to Peru two and a half years ago.

Her coming to us meant our small house became even smaller, and while we’ve been talking and talking about getting a bigger house, we’ve never pulled the trigger. Well, 2020 was the year we finally did that, and I am typing this from my new chairs in our new living room, next to the Christmas tree we put up the day before Christmas eve… it’s been busy.

We’ve lost friends and loved ones this year, and it sucks that we can’t come together to grieve and remember them, finding comfort in our collective memories. So yeah, 2020 also took away that from us. And while we all can complain about technology and how impersonal everything has become, technology has helped keep us together and connect with each other and get through these rough patches honoring the memories of those we love. 

2020 is the year when we couldn’t celebrate Easter and go to Mass and receive the sacraments. Oh, how painfully difficult that was… and yet, it allowed us all to become hungry for that which we so sorely missed and so many times took for granted. And it forced us all to be creative. We are so very grateful for our priests and parish team that came up with ways to keep connected and connecting, that brought us Mass online to help us bridge the time until we could come together, that had our priests doing drive-through blessings for Easter, and so many more ways in which they kept us going. Now, we bundle up really well and go to church outside in the cold at times, masked, distanced, and grateful to be able to be there. 

Yeah. 2020 sucked. And 2020 rocked. And we all want a do-over, but if we are to be honest, we only want a do-over for some things and not others, because there have been blessings all along and all around throughout this whole year. And isn’t that just life? Good and bad, ugly and beautiful, neat and messy, tragic and hopeful. It’s always a mixed bag. It always will be. And so, while we welcome 2021 with the hope of a vaccine and a light at the end of the very long tunnel, let us count our blessings, let us be grateful, let us remember the things we learned this year and the priorities we refocused on, and let us seek a better normal than the one we had, because out of all the things that sucked before, the rat race is what sucked the most.

Thank you, 2020, for the many moments of light among the darkness. Welcome 2021… a new year, renewed hope, and an opportunity for us all to do better.