My 2022 in Review
If I were to describe my 2023, I'd have to quote Charles Dickens because I can truly say “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…”. This has been a very full year for me but the following should serve as a highlight reel of the joyful and sorrowful complexities that have shaped 2022 for me.
On the wins and wisdom side I:
married the love of my life and had the most precious and intentional ceremony to honor what we are building together.
got to celebrate my marriage to Alexis with beloveds who came in from all over the country. Our guests adhered to pretty strict covid safety protocols so we could hug, touch, and engage in person for the 1st time in years. Our ceremony, food, and drinks were top tier because of the degree of intent and love present in these offerings and it was felt by all.
regained full functionality in my hands after over a year of having limited mobility and strength along with wildly high pain that required months of treatment and surgeries.
accidentally became a dog mom to Humphrey when we adopted the bestest boy ever after a random visit to our local ASPCA to just play with puppies. My Muppet made my life so much sweeter over the past 7 months.
went to Brazil for our honeymoon with Lex and we experienced sheer delight and celebration of our Blackness there, food that was deliciously unreal, and joy. This was a respite we sorely needed.
helped design, set up, and manage an evolving social network for spiritual wonderers and nomads thru Evolving Faith. I also shifted roles which allowed some trusted folks to enter into leadership and SHINE.
was reconnected to a collective doing HIV/AIDS work in the next stage of their project for organizational support, group processing, and culture shift support. I helped them in their launch 3 years ago and they reached our again which was a blessing.
maintained two multi year contracts that give me immense joy as a justice educator, equity consultant, and minister. I am so grateful to work with these incredible people.
taught my first group of graduate students and did so in the Social Justice MA program I graduated from in 2016. My dean is a dear friend who mentored & cared for me thru some of the most devastating seasons of my life and I've always (half)joked that he's the only reason I'd go back. My students are some of the most beautiful & reflective people I've ever met and walking alongside them in their learning was an honor.
successfully advocated for my physical and mental wellness which includes managing chronic conditions, finding a new therapist, and getting med management for anxiety and chronic illnesses. It also meant doing relational pruning to limit my connection to people who revealed themselves to be toxic or resentful.
saw artists I LOVE live because of outdoor event and working with venues on special seating for disabled and immunocompromised folk.
deepened my relationship with myself and my dear ones. I peeled off layers of protective armor and let my tender & complex self breathe and be known more fully and without apology.
set and held some pretty hard-core boundaries for my protection despite the response to this setting & holding.
And while this is all so lovely, I'd be remiss if I didn't name that I also:
endured some of the worst incidences of pain and illness of my life including recovery from 2 surgeries, covid, unidentified flus, adult ear infections, and most recently an injury sustained from caring for my sick pup.
navigated bank fraud with Lex in Brazil which means I've now officially successfully dealt with scammers on 2 international trips.
am grieving things that happened on our wedding day because it was neither what we envisioned or worked hard towards. I'm not going to get into super deep explanation but will bullet point because this is a point of sensitivity for me, Lex, & our inner most community for different reasons. I will name that while the ceremony proper was lovely despite other things that went awry. So Lex & I don't have any wedding portraits of just the 2 of us, we don't have any family portraits, we each just have 1 photo with our respective parents though mine is a not great candid (I mention this bc my parents are divorced & do not get along so that will likely be the last photo I ever have with them both), our wedding video feed was compromised & professional decisions around that made our wedding start an hour late, details that were planned for and supported by sorted materials were not executed, we had no toast or affirmations despite it getting requested by people and being in our program, we had to call our own vendors on the day and after to mitigate issues others were hired to take care of, and our poor DJ got covid the day of the wedding. I could let this go with disappointment but ease if not for 3 things: we were meticulously organized and simple conversations with us by those dropping the responsibility ball could've avoided almost everything, we were denied an accountability or restorative process, and also had to endure the additional harms of being decentered in our follow up, being blamed for ball drops we hired someone else to handle, and seeing then managing the impact of professional miscommunication and flat-out lies on and to us and our beloveds. But its really this last bit that still deeply grieves me - my wife and her father lost their moment to walk down the aisle DESPITE repeated rehearsal due to our coordinator being harried. I've intentionally obscured responsibility above but THIS is solely on her and we will never get this moment back because of my father in law passing a few months later. There are moments in life where slowness and care are your friends because some things cannot be undone.
along with my wife, mother in law, and family, am still grieving the loss of my father in law. He got to see his baby girl find love, get married, buy a home, and accomplish goals alongside me which is a blessing but it sucks that he's not here with us anymore. I just truly wish we had more time…
navigated the 4-day wildest tragedy arc during this past week while sick with the flu which includes my dog getting sick, my dog having to be euthanized because of said sickness, having a massive anxiety attack due to trauma activation, the entire 1st floor of my house flooding on Christmas day, and now being out of the house for an indeterminate amount of time while things are being dried out, demolished, repaired, and replaced. I've got PTSD and other trauma things to address in the year ahead specifically because this year is going out with a bang.
I'm sharing all I have as a means of release. I hold so much in ways I’m starting to understand and work thru. So I release gratitude and love for all that brought joy and release grief, anger, and my ever present thought of “you've gotta be fucking kidding me” as an exhale of what's brought harm or anguish.
To that end, I think I'm leaving 2022 with stronger relationships as well as a better sense of self and the depth of my heart, strength, trauma, and pain. I can say I've done things I've deeply proud of and even more deeply love my wife because we've navigated this all together (#ganggang). I actually didn't even realize it was New Year's Eve until late last night because I'm so exhausted so 2023 can come right on in cause this year needs to go lol. But as the psalmist GloRilla shared, “every day the sun won't shine, but that is why I love tomorrow”.
May joy, peace, richness, love, inspired imagination, and delight be our companions in the year to come.