2023

My most basic goal for 2023 is to create for myself the ability to live better in the world. I am one of those spiritual types who finds it easier to spend my time in the Aether day dreaming about the reality I want, and miss opportunities for creating it. This year I want to change that. I have made great strides toward being a better person in the world, in terms of showing up for other people, places and events, but this time, I want to honor my own life purpose by showing up for myself and asking for what I need instead of feeling disappointed when it is not automatically delivered to me.

I caught a podcast on YouTube recently where someone (I forgot who) was interviewing famous psychic John Edwards and he thinks this year will be a year of accountability. Accountability goes two ways: I need to stand up for myself in terms of holding others accountable for their promises and I need to be accountable to others in turn for promises I have made. Part of that is not to make promises I will not or can not keep!

2022 was a challenging year for me in many ways. Someone dear to me is in the nursing home. Caring for him, then getting him there, meant I had to be on top of many things, and because he was the financial guru in our home, all of the money stuff – some good and some not so good – was left to me to deal with. I had relief with some bills because of meeting the right people who pointed me in the best direction and I suffered through other things, such as the IRS hitting me with money I owed because my husband and I missed tax details in 2021 as dementia robbed him of his financial prowess. But I don’t wish to complain. Challenges are there to make us stronger, and the challenges I turned to face definitely turned my life process around and made me a more wholehearted person.

My husband is still in the nursing home. I cannot care for him, but I try to visit him most days. There is a sadness in my heart that his final time of life must take him through this, but there is nothing I can fix, nothing I can do, to make his life better, but to show up and be a loving presence. He is not an easy patient on the staff, and to them I make often a point of saying “Thank you. Thank you for taking care of what I cannot. I appreciate you.” The entire episode leaves me with the question of how do I want to spend my last lucid moments in the Earth, since I cannot take with me anything except the efforts I have made to grow my soul while I am yet in life. I am at that point in my own soul evolution when the need to be of service instead of a “me me” arises.

There is a balance to be struck here. With my spouse in the nursing home, I have had to learn to manage better self care, because there is no one to take care of him or our pet if I cannot. I have faced grief, anger, sadnesses and joys, as memories and reality have played out across the lens of my recent experiences. I have had to build a home empty of someone who was a large presence in it. I have practiced changing my self-talk in order to foster confidence in my process. Each day is opportunity and challenge. I have examined my life and found things to share with my husband before it was too late to speak them and make things right. We have been in a state of deeper love since he is not home.

It is hard for him to realize he will not come home. I could wish that his fading memory had taken him down foggy avenues of a happier past, but he is not such a person. He had commonly been very present and in charge of his life. He has a fiery will that wanders the hallways seeking escape, but he cannot remember the necessary steps of his own self-care. His dementia is hard for me to witness. Good moments happen though. I made his favorite cake for his recent birthday and family he had not seen for months arrived for the occasion. His happiness lasted several days. I pin my memories on these good moments.

But all of that aside. I began this blog today stating that I wanted to show up better in the world for myself in 2023. One of those ways is showing up for myself in writing this blog, instead of letting so much time elapse in between my efforts as I did in 2022, when I had so many life distractions to confront. One of the self-talk changes I wrote down and stuck on my wall on a 3×5 card reads: SHOW UP. FACE UNCERTAINTY. LIVE YOUR LIFE. I liked that one so much that I am actually painting it in acrylic on canvas to hang in a prominent spot in my home where I will view it coming and going every day. It reminds me to be present with courage and love for my own process. That is the kind of self-care that the events of 2022 taught me.