And just like that, December has arrived.

The final month in the great transformative year 2020 is here.

For me, this year has been primarily deeply disorienting. Writing has taken a back seat to ritual as I have struggled to find any words I can hold on to. But endings have a way of inspiring reflection, of begging questions like:  

What happened? How am I different now? What have I learned? What have I laid to rest? Who have we been? Who are we becoming? 

In preparation for our next Wild Woman School, Digesting 2020, as an exercise, I decided to write about single meaningful moment for each month of the year as a way to remember and to begin to sense into these questions and integrate all that has come to pass.

I wasn’t planning on sharing it, but about half way through writing, I thought perhaps I could. I know I haven’t written to you as much, or as in depth as I have in previous years, and my relationship to social media so radically changed this year – I barely touch it. Perhaps in reading this, you will get a sense of why, and receive this as a share, my heart to yours. 

Along with the meaningful moment, I am also including a song that I associate with each month and/or that memory.

I know we have all been through an awful lot this year. I know our stories are woven together in ways visible and invisible. If it calls to you, I invite you take on this exercise for yourself.

(And also to join us for the Ritual Reflection that will be Wild Woman School this month). 

Here goes.

January

I started this year with a month long writing retreat, by myself, near the ocean in a city I’d never been too. It was the most bucket list, dream-come-true thing I think I’ve ever had the great privilege of doing. On my first walk along the oceanside, I met a man with clear eyes and a bright smile and whose way of being made me feel safe to talk to him in a strange place at dusk. He told me about the day he found out about the rare strain of leukemia he had been diagnosed with many years before. As day turned to night, he told me the exact number of days he had been alive since then. I wish I remembered the exact number, but it was in the low thousands. He counted every day of his new life, his new reality, for the diagnosis had changed everything. We talked about music and the mountains we loved and when we parted, I wondered what it would be like to wake up and count the exact days. I teared up as I walked to my little rental, what a thing, I thought, to be so grateful for every single precious day of one’s life. 

Song: Astral Plane by Valerie June

I must have listened to this song at least 25 times in January.

February

On Super Tuesday, I woke up, electrified. My mom and I danced outside of the election site in West Asheville for hours. I was part of the us in the “Not me, Us” Bernie Sanders movement. I had donated, did outreach, I volunteered, I educated myself on history and policy. 2019 into the beginning of January was a joyous time of hope and a chance for a brighter future, especially for those Americans who have been left behind in the American project, of which there were and are so many. 

As night fell that Tuesday something shifted. On the walk home I started to feel a little sick. A call came in from by fiancé that the numbers weren’t looking good. I knew most of the candidates dropping out to back Biden the day before would have an impact, but I didn’t quite realize how big it would be.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t devastated by Bernie’s ultimate loss. I’m not sure I will ever fully recover. That loss, and the orchestrated way it happened, has forever changed me and my relationship to to the political establishment & corporate media class (and the funders of both, the wealthy corporate interests & oligarchs). 

We got so close. For no one, in any party, in the history of the United States has ever won the first 3 primary contests and did not go on to be the nominee. And the movement truly was not about him; It was about the policies he advocated for. Bernie would have filled his cabinet with public servants that have values in alignment with my own: people & planet over profit. He would have cancelled student loan debt on day 1 via executive order and freed a few of generations from the economic shackles of a corrupt system, in effect stimulating the economy in crisis, and dramatically reducing the racial wealth gap in this country. He would have done anything in his power to get Medicare for All through, so people don’t needlessly die or go bankrupt and lose their homes for the crime of getting cancer. He would have taken seriously the scientists and climate activists who are begging those in power to make dramatic changes for the sake of Earth and the future of our species. As an American citizen with hefty student loan debt I’ve been paying on diligently for almost 20 years (with no end in sight), who is priced out of the ACA, and who enjoys living and breathing on this spectacular planet, these kinds of policies would radically change my life and my future, as well as the life and future my fellow Americans, who I really do deeply care about.

That Tuesday is when the light in 2020 really started to dim for me. 

Song: Times They are a Changing, Cover by Lila Rose

What could have been and what we so badly needed. 

March

Thursday the 12th, I laid in Savasana, or “corpse pose”, at my local yoga studio with my favorite teacher, in a full room and suddenly realized it wasn’t safe. It was so strange to feel something so wrong about something so normal, something I had done a hundred times before. A sudden panic came over me, I am deeply breathing in a sweaty, enclosed space and there is this virus that is spreading all over the world. 

I laid there realizing in a matter of a few minutes I would not be attending another yoga class for a good long time, I would have to cancel the Wild Woman Fest, and also, my wedding. It felt as though the fabric of reality was being stretched or twisted, distorted. I talked to a few friends on the phone after this realization and I remember them telling me, “slow down”, “you don’t know that yet” , and that “you should wait.” I did wait, but I knew that day. 

That moment in corpse-pose was the precise moment the disorientation began. All plans were off, all norms were not normal, the space between us was…what…how…

The very next day Breonna Taylor was shot to death by police in bed…

No, no, no…

Song: Light of a Clear Blue Morning, Cover by Wailin’ Jennys 

Inexplicably, I began to walk our property singing this song as some kind of prayer, or soothing medicine. It seemed music was the only thing that made sense anymore.

April

On the eve of my birthday, I had been up all night crying. Mourning, processing, riddled with anxiety, full of doubt about…everything. When I woke up, under-slept and puffy eyed, I just wanted lay on the Earth and have her hold me. I did, she did, for the better part of the day. It was a bright and colorful Spring day and yet I remembering feeling so tired and so deeply depleted, gray on the inside. 

In the early evening, I heard honking and looked out to the edge our land and saw something beautiful. A train of cars, full of colorfully dressed humans, faces of people I loved shining through the windows. They pulled in, and did a costumed, socially distanced Beatles mini concert “Let it be” into “Birthday.” 

“And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree

There will be an answer, let it be

For though they may be parted, there is still a chance that they will see

There will be an answer, let it be”

And then there were soul tears and a colorful remembrance of the most important thing in the universe: the people I love. 

Song: Let It Be by the Beatles

May

He, a loving father, forced to lay facedown on the pavement, a policeman’s knee on his neck, and with his last breaths, he cried out to his mama, before his public execution without trial. 

When George Floyd’s light went out, the volcano erupted. 

Thus began the largest Civil Rights Marches in American History. 93% of which were completely peaceful.

No matter how the corporate media, bad faith political actors, or anyone else tries to spin it, it was a righteous, long-overdue expression of fundamental boundaries, and there is so much more where that came from. 

You cannot put the lava back in – not ever.

Song: Ella’s Song by Sweet Honey in the Rock

Ode to great Civil Right’s leader and mentor Ella Baker. We listened to this together in Wild Woman School that month.

June

The thunder and lighting roared at the edge of the Earth, mirroring the tumult of the times.

I didn’t know it then, but this would be the last time I ever saw one of my best friends. Four of us, best couple friends, quarantine pod buddies, went to visit the ocean. With the patience of a saint, sitting beside the beach, Tyler told me much of the story of Lord of the Rings. There were so many parallels in the myth to the times at hand and I had so many questions. With his beloved Rhonda by his side, he answered them one by one, with a little knowing smile. He explained that Sam was the true hero of the story, the archetypal friend. I’ll never forget that. At 27, Tyler was so wise. 

When I told him I wanted to read it or at least watch the movies, he smiled and said quietly and sincerely, with an actual twinkle in his eye, “When you do, look for the tender moments.”

From that moment on, I tried to not only look for tender moments, but to create them, to try to stitch those moments together, one after the next. 

Song: Many Meetings by Howard Shore

From the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

July

Sometime near 1am on July 8th, Bennett and I happened to be awake in bed. 

Rhonda, one half of our best couple friends, called. Strange, we thought after barely missing it. Bennett tried calling right back, no answer. Then he got up to go to the restroom. 

A few minutes later I heard a troubled tone echoing from downstairs. I got up and ran down the stairs. I heard his voice through the rumbling of tears, “Tyler died” and then Rhonda’s precious voice through the speaker phone. 

All we could say was “Noooo” and “no” and “No!” 

We fell to our knees and wept. The shock and grief propelled me into doing strange laps around the living room, getting up and sitting down again, rocking in place, and then finally grabbing my journal to start a list titled: “Things we can do for Rhonda.”

The days, weeks, and months that followed were full of tender moments of the highest order as we, as a community, walked through the portal of death together. Forever bonded by our love for Tyler and everything he embodied in his too-short life. Committed to take care of those he loved and left behind. To ask, in any and all situations, What would Tyler do?

Underneath all the grief, without saying a word about it, our community seemed to take a silent vow to hold those we love even closer, even more carefully, to remember that it could all be over, without warning on an idle Tuesday.

For a few months everything else in the world faded away.

Grief is an initiation that leaves little room for anything else.

Song: Just Breathe, Cover by Willie Nelson

One of Tyler’s dearest friends made a playlist for his Goodbye Ceremony and this was on it. So many tears shed to this beautiful piece of music… 

August

Celebrating five years together, two months before our would-be wedding date, a month after losing our close friend, Bennett and I went camping. On the way, he told me that he had booked a camping site in a forest because he knew I was happiest amongst the trees. We visited a mighty waterfall and slept under great big pines, surrounded by the most beautiful moss you’ve ever seen. Bennett read his anniversary poem to me titled “The Two” and I wept, feeling the preciousness of loving and being loved and the intensity of knowing someone so well and being known.

The year had put considerable strain on us and so many couples, understandably so. Through the grapevine we had learned of several divorces and break-ups in our community which really shook me. Probably because I know the statistics. We are just two kids of divorce trying to break through what we learned about marriage through the early heartbreaks and trauma, and stay with it, walk through it, keep learning, don’t let the fear lead. Let the love do that. It is a moment by moment, day by day, process of trying to love better, more skillfully. And it is absolutely work, no question, but it is work I will devote myself to until forever. 

Those days in the forest are among the most precious in my whole life. 

Song: I Belong to You by Brandi Carlile

Since I first heard this song live in 2016, I’ve been imagining dancing to it at our Wedding. It’s our song. I’ll keep listening & keep imagining until that day comes. 

September

I can’t say much about this one. Some things are too sacred to name.

I’ll say this: there was a song, and love so deep it lit up the sky.

Song: Raven Song by Elephant Revival

October

Out on a great big lake, I saw a bald eagle in flight for the first time in my life and I wept. There was a synthesis, a surrender, and an ease that started to flow through. 

Song: More Love by Darren Scott & Tim O’Brian

November

Sitting in silence with six others who have been sincerely devoted to walking a spiritual path, as we sense something new is trying to come into form through us. Though we sit in 3 different countries, we are together.

What a thing to begin to braid your love and learnings with the love and learnings of others, I think to myself, regardless of what comes out of this, the making of it is a joy. 

Song: All Around You by Sturgill Simpson

December

To be lived. 

Your Turn 

In the comments below, please share one meaningful moment you lived out in 2020,

and perhaps a song to go with. 

Join us for an hour-long New Moon Meditation Adventure on May 7th!

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Using a dynamic meditation journey, we will tune into the New Moon, to your own Inner Guidance, synced up with wild-hearted women from around the world. This offering will include music, storytelling, meditation, journaling prompts & intention-setting.

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