Dear 2020,

In light of the recent change of year from you to ‘21, I’d like to take a moment to thank you for doing the best you could given what you were handed.

No one anywhere will say that you were easy. 

Many have called you any number of names including cruel, heartless, cold, insensitive, random, unfair, and mean. 

I’ll be honest. Despite my normally sunny disposition, there were times when I didn’t like you and cursed your existence.

I cried my share of tears.

However, as I write these words, I have a smile on my face. My heart isn’t beating with resentment, bitterness, or a desire for revenge even though you took things from me.

Rather, my heart is full of gratitude.

Gratitude for creating circumstances I never would have chosen for myself, but in a strange twist of fate, turned out to be exactly what I needed.

Dear 2020 

Thank you for granting me time to think about my professional life, specifically around what I’m supposed to be doing in it.

Thank you for helping me figure out what I want from my life moving forward, and why I do what I do.

Thank you for helping more us to understand what truly matters to us and what doesn’t.

Thank you for waking us up as a planet. 

Thank you for kicking us in the ass, exactly where we needed it.

Thank you for creating conditions that have fostered creativity, problem-solving, and new ways of working together on common goals.

In your darkest hours, you also offered us a light to guide us forward. To ask big questions. To wrestle with difficult answers.

Without you, dear 2020, this new year wouldn’t feel as powerful and full of possibilities as it does.

Frankly, I think at the rate we were going before you, this year would have been like all the others. 

We’d be celebrating in the usual ways.

Making the usual resolutions.

Setting the usual goals.

Headed in the same, disastrous direction.

Thanks to you, this year is different.

As time passes, your edges will soften as edges always do with time. If we are smart, the lessons you taught us about love and forgiveness and community will stay front and center for the rest of our days.

So dear 2020 -- for all the sorrow and pain and disappointment you caused, you also opened us up for joy and delight and satisfaction in ways we have yet to experience in the years ahead.

And for that, we have reason to celebrate you!

Love,

MaryLou

P.S. I’m sorry for posting that mean meme on my Facebook page of a cartoon kid kicking you. I have deleted it and am working on not getting caught up in the raw emotion of the moment social media is so good at triggering.