This time of year…this upcoming week and a half in particular…has been hard for me for many years now. I’ve found the bright spots where I can, but at the end of the day, it’s a heavy time.

They say there are five stages of grief. Well, I went through life believing I’d walked myself through each of those for all the monumental moments of loss I’d experienced.

However, it would seem that a few of my life events overlapped without my knowledge.

You know, I never could quite understand why I had gone almost two decades without being able to make it past this particular life-altering event. I had talked about it. I had cried about it. I had prayed about it. I had yelled about it. I had written about it. I had a million songs I’d heard that made me know that, unfortunately, others had also gone through similar things; I was not special here.

Not moving on made no logical sense.

Then, one unsuspecting day, a phone conversation threw open a door that I have to believe was bolted shut many years ago by others, with the intention of never being opened again…you know…for my sake.

A lot led up to it, but with that phone call, I kind of feel like I was just walking on the beach with a metal detector and happened upon the key to that very door.

As you would imagine, I had to try a few different doors before I finally found the one that key was meant for, but I found it nonetheless.

When I opened that door, I knew that would be my new ‘before’ and ‘after.’

I was right, but not in the way had I expected.

In that room lay the memories of all kinds of things from my past that had hurt me. There were old friends, family members, boyfriends, but most of all, there was sunlight coming through cracks just enough to show that the dust that had been disturbed from my digging around was turning into some kind of beautiful snow globe. As I sat there, trying my best to piece all of this together and try to make sense of everything, all of the pieces fell into place.

Sitting in that room, I found the roots of my sadness. I found where they were born, and I found the people who nurtured them.

In this moment, I could have done more yelling, but this time…it felt different.

A lot of life has happened now since that day I opened that door. But this past week, I felt as though I may have finally been able to dust everything off and pack it away into the boxes it has always belonged in. While I can never get rid of those boxes because they are a part of me, I can put them into storage now instead of having the things out on display around my home to be seen and reminded of each day.

All of this happened without my noticing at first. I had a really sad week last week and I did the best I could with the circumstances, but what I didn’t realize until a few days in was that all of this work I have been trying to do since I was 18 years old, all of this work I have been trying to do since 2012, and all of this work that I have been trying to do since 2016/2017 was not a waste of time.

That work just set me free.

I know I have written here that I have always worn guilt like it was a coat in the middle of winter. Well, somehow, in this very real winter we are entering today, I have been able to finally take that coat off. I was able to see those around me for exactly who they are, and not just who I so hoped they would be, or not for who they said they were.

I had this sad, yet beautiful day in a hospital room with my dad last week that, for some reason, gave me so much clarity. I was able to allow people to just be who they are. I was able to stop worrying so much about being able to carry weight that was never mine to carry. I was able to stop feeling guilty about things that were never my fault. I was finally able to stop the urge to fix.

I have a feeling that for the first time in my life, I finally reached acceptance.

You see, I had walked myself through all of the stages of grief with all the things, but for some reason, I could never quite reach acceptance. I think maybe a part of me thought that if I accepted things, it meant I’d failed. I thought it meant I’d given up on the people I love. I thought it meant losing hope.

I’ll still need some time to process this backlog sweeping of acceptance because it feels very foreign to me right now. However, taking some advice from Mel Robbins…I think it’s finally time for me to stop trying so hard and just…let them.

I can see now how many years, tears, paychecks, and pieces of my heart went towards trying to fix people. Man, some people just don’t want to be fixed. And some people are so oblivious that even if they wanted help, they are not far enough into their journey to know they even need it yet.

When you care about people, that is a hard pill to swallow.

So, where does this leave me now? It leaves me with a very heavy past…that I just laid down.

It leaves me with the hope of a future where I can recognize when I can help someone, and when I should just carry on, possibly without them.

It leaves me with starting a new year where I can use my resources on myself. Now that will be a very strange feeling for me.

Listen, I have a book I need to finish writing. I may never choose to publish it, but there are a few people I’d love to hand deliver it to, and none of us are guaranteed tomorrow, so I’d better get to finishing it.

That’s the kind of resources I’m talking about. My time. My headspace. My energy.

It’s difficult to explain, but even though acceptance feels like you failed, it is quite the opposite.

Just because you accept a situation for what it is, or a person for who they are, doesn’t mean you failed yourself or them. It just means you get to be whole again while you wait for the change you hope for.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

~Alisha