I just know that the phrase I woke to yesterday, January 1, 2015, was “Once more around the sun.” There was some kind of clarity to that—clarity that I have no idea what this next trip around the sun will bring.
From my first blog post in 2015.

It’s been a momentous year. Some who were with me when I wondered what my trip around the sun in 2015 would bring are no longer here. And then there was Tom’s dance with cancer.

I had an acquaintance tell me recently that she wanted to wait to have lunch with me until I had something cheerful to talk about. Though this year has been filled with loss and lessons in mortality, it never occurred to me that I wasn’t cheerful.

What this trip round the sun brought me was a profound experience of life, up close and personal as it never has before. I am acutely aware that I am a different person today than the one who wrote on the first day of my most recent journey ’round the sun.

Weathered.
Older.
Wiser.
Accepting.
More secure.

It’s that last one, more secure, that I didn’t expect until I wrote it. I’m often surprised to learn that people think of me as self-confident, since I have been filled with insecurity and self-doubt.

But something about weathering the storms of this past year has helped me strip away my expectations of myself—that if I didn’t please everyone, if people felt uncomfortable around me, if I scare people, that it was a fault in me.

I wanted everyone to like me.

I think I’ve learned that it’s prudent to be a bit more specific. Like is important to me. As important as love. I like to be liked.

Life, I learned this year, likes me. It throws stuff at me, but it likes me. And I like life—with all its joys and sorrows.

I have no idea what my next journey ’round the sun will bring me, but I’m sure it will be filled with life. I welcome it.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.