I heard the rumble beneath my feet.
A storm warning.
I think we all heard it.
I think we all knew that 2020 would change us.
I’m not sure that any of us knew how much.
How much wreckage, ache and wounds it would leave in its wake.
The people who died.
The people who suffered.
The people who wailed for a nation and a world to wake up.
The people who lost incomes and opportunities.
The people who were trapped.
2020 was a year I proclaimed boldness over my life. I knew that if I was to continue in the direction I was heading, I would need to harness my fears and daily make choices that went against my own tendencies to anxiety. So with an understanding of what it would mean to be bold, I went into the year asking for the grace to keep space for myself and others as I navigated the unknowns, and the confidence to trust the calling.
And then it began.
My steadfast and strong grandfather being taken by cancer in mere weeks, gripping onto my cousin as we grappled with the loss we just couldn’t comprehend and the realization that we couldn’t hold a funeral. The world announcing a pandemic, and staying home to stay safe. Thirty-three people murdered near our city by a man dressed as a police officer. Watching the outcry of the Black Lives Matter movement and discussing the systemic racism found in every corner of our world, including our own mixed-race family. Finding that our current home might not be the best place for our little family to continue growing, trying to sell our little home and find a new one. Kidney stones. Sending our daughter to her first year of a public school during a pandemic with masks in her pockets. A grandmother diagnosed with cancer….
But I see it there.
Boldness.
It’s a golden thread.
It’s in those quiet moments of attempting to hold each other close in the grief despite past traumas and pain. In that persistence in writing applications despite a lack of work opportunities. In the discussions with those in Women in Film about how to better support our BIPOC community. Trusting that our next home was waiting for us as we did the work of preparing and searching. Accepting sponsorship to take online classes from a producer and writer in England and learning how to collaborate with colleagues in new ways. Advocating for my own physical health in an emergency room. Supporting our daughter through so much change into her first year of school. Pitching ideas to broadcasters and honouring contracts. Finding a new sense of ourselves after so much heartache and pain.
& so,
We’ve suffered, and we’ve come out battered and a bit wounded.
I would also argue, that a lot of that wounding and reshaping…
It was for a way to be made new in this new decade.
We are called to new things.
If we stay the same,
Live the way we always have lived
See-through the same lens we’ve always been viewing it all through,
We’ll never be truly becoming.
Making the bold next right move has transformed the way I look at things. The world is a place full of beauty, and full of pain. How we hold space for both of those truths is something that will define us and those around us.
I want to continue into the next year continuing the work that boldness showed me.
It’s possible to call out what is dangerous, what is systemic and harmful and not lose the grace and perspective that allows us to recognize the pain and wounds that have shaped the situations before us.