“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” ― Gabriel García Márquez
On the Sunday before New Year’s Day, I relaxed in my recliner, watched CBS Sunday Morning — my weekly ritual — with the fireplace glowing, cozy, under my holiday gift of a soft throw. Definitely, a hygee moment. Hygee is defined as follows, “…a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture).”
A hygee morning.
I also began to look back at 2024 and review the year, the changes, losses, and lessons learned. I begin and name a new journal every fall in September. This is my 17th continuous journal, which I started when living alone as a singleton. Prior to that, I kept recovery journals when I first became sober, and afterwards, whenever I encountered a bump in the road and needed to reflect on how to move forward. I named this year’s journal, Things Change, and it has certainly lived up to its name.
Before I look back at 2024, a note about the holiday season beginning with Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, The last Thanksgiving, and the holidays that followed, celebrated in person with family and friends in larger gatherings prior to 2024, was in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted how we celebrated the holidays with family and friends as we sheltered in place.
In 2021, I joined family and friends in masked and/or smaller groups. In 2022, I underwent hip-replacement surgery, isolating at home beginning in November. In 2023, I contracted COVID for the first time during Thanksgiving after visiting Dad in the hospital. In December, Dad died, and though I was immunized for the flu, I came down with it. Oh, My! Yes, things change!
One last look back before a review of 2024, this one from the eve of the 2011 New Year:
Looking Back, Looking Forward
It was an ominous beginning to my day as I realized when leaving for work that I put my pants on backwards. Now before you judge me harshly as a fool, I must tell you, they are dress pants with no zippers, or identifiable closures or pockets. The only signifier is a tag sewn in the back. Before I checked for the tag however, I noticed a little extra fabric billowing in the area of my tummy, and the fit in my butt seemed tight. Yes, I began my day ass-backwards.
Today, on the eve of the New Year, I salute the Roman God Janus, as I look back at the year behind me and look ahead to 2011. I realize too, that not only did I probably not keep my resolutions from 2010; I don’t even have a clue of what they were. For me that is the nature of New Year’s resolutions, forgettable intentions, or intentions without a disciplined, passionate plan.
Instead, I believe in the importance of an examined life. To remember, to reminisce with relish and delight the mundane details of one’s life and the people who share our journey. To take a second look at my shortcomings and missteps, make amends and strive to change, to affirm my accomplishments and celebrate, even momentarily, before moving to the next thing on my list. And, lastly, to dream, imagine and visualize the future.
My pants are now facing the right direction and I feel ready to cross the threshold of the New Year. I’m prepared as I can be to enter a new year, a new decade and a new chapter of my life. Today, I resolve to move on with the moving on, one day at a time.
A Look Back at 2024
From my essay in September, Things Change, “Things change has also been the theme of this year, and the title of my 17th annual journal, which begin in September. It’s also the final chapter of my life — no longer a dress rehearsal — yet an opportunity “To change the things I can” and leave a legacy behind, the measure of my life.”
The first week of the New Year in January 2024, our family mourned, paid tribute, and buried our father, grandfather, and great grandfather, our last surviving parent. Like many others of a certain age, we were orphans of a sort. I was now the eldest family member. The Last Goodbye.
This event triggered a number of responses and actions. My sister Tami, the youngest sibling remarked, “We were once a family of eight, now we’re four.” After the funeral, we returned to our respective homes in Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, and Italy. Some family members needed to retreat and asked us to give them space to grieve. My brother, Rick and his wife Nancy, with help from sister, Kelly, were tasked with closing down Dad’s home and readying it for sale.
Tami and I returned to our childhood home, which our parents purchased in 1955, and raised their family of six children, and the generations that followed. It was the hub of family gatherings and holidays. It housed the material things and ephemera that represented our lives. It was the setting for a lifetime of memories.
An illustration of our childhood home, a gift from our sister, Tami.
Next, we needed to sort through what remained, decide what we each wanted to keep, and what we were able to let go. It was a metaphor for grief. I’ve always said, “Grief and gratitude go hand-in-hand.” My sister Tami and I spent the day in early February, our final visit to our childhood home where we looked through boxes of photos, newspaper clippings, memorabilia, and the material legacy of our parents and family home. The home was sold in March, and the family estate distributed to the surviving siblings. Goodbye to Our Childhood Home
Life resumed. I made the decision to return to behavioral health therapy. I found a new therapist, and in early February began working on unresolved issues from my past, rooted in trauma, shame, and stigma. I also wanted to redefine my family role and create healthier boundaries and be less codependent in my intimate bio and chosen family relationships. Though I was approaching 39 years of recovery from alcohol, I needed to address the lifelong emotional and compulsive overeating issues which began in childhood and impacted my health. Oh, My!
I continued physical therapy for both my hip replacement in 2022 and fractured humerus at my right shoulder from an accidental fall in 2023. I lost range of motion in both arms, and continued to experience osteoarthritic inflammation and pain in my joints, including my right shoulder and arm which I relied on more during the recovery from the fall.
After a consult with an orthopedic surgeon which determined I was a candidate for surgery for both shoulders, I explored alternative options at the pain clinic and in February received a steroid shot in my right shoulder to relieve pain. It helped for awhile.
As a person of a certain age, some days it felt like my life, by choice, was spent working half-time as an LGBTQ+ AODA & Harm Reduction Advocate, maintaining my physical and mental health by attending appointments, sometimes weekly, and the work required to care for my home, feed myself, and the list goes on. As a writer, I spent time on projects for both my job and my avocation.
It wasn’t “all work and no play.” I attended a performance at the Bartell Theater, Torch Song Trilogy, an Aimee Mann concert at the Stoughton Opera House, potluck brunches with my Pod Squad chosen family, celebrated birthdays with family and friends, coffee dates with old and new friends at my new third place, Northstreet, and movie matinees alone and with filmgoing friends and family. I attended my monthly Death & Dying Peer Support Group (it’s more about life and living) and my Door County Write On LGBTQ+ Writers Group. In the fall, a biannual road trip in the Wisconsin countryside, the Fermentation Fest Farm/Art DTour with chosen family.
Before my IT, tech-savvy, nephew Quinn returned to his last semester of school at UW-Stevens Point, he helped me shop and setup my new technology purchases which all aged-out at the same time. I bought a new smart phone, laptop, printer, and flatscreen TV. What was I thinking? Later, I purchased OTC hearing aids after I learned I had moderate hearing loss. The latter still a work in progress.
Quinn at work!
Life became challenging again late summer, early fall, with the unexpected death of a work colleague and friend. There were work deadlines and projects too, recertification as a Wisconsin Certified Peer Specialist (WICPS), the design and launch of a Harm Reduction workshop, Reducing Harm: One Step, One Story at a Time, and design and facilitation of a Community of Practice WICPS webinar, Building Peer Trust by Sharing Lived Experience.
As part of my work in therapy and health issues related to Type II Diabetes and obesity, I began taking a GLP-1 medication, Mounjaro. Soon, my A1C dropped, and I stopped taking the Metformin prescription for diabetes that I had been on for decades! To date, I’ve lost 20 pounds, which helped to take weight off my arthritic joints and protect my heart health.
At the end of October, I wrote and shared my most personally intimate blog essay about my identity as an intersex person, The Last Closet Door: Act II. In November, prior to Thanksgiving, a family member had a serious accidental fall. It’s not my story to tell yet, other than we rallied to support them in their recovery.
During this emotionally challenging time, I designed, drafted, and submitted a detailed proposal to Voice of Witness Storyteller Initiative Fellowship, Restorative Storytelling: The Healing Power of Shared Lived Experience. If awarded the fellowship grant, the project begins in March of 2025.
My sister Tami, and husband Ron, hosted a small family Thanksgiving with his immediate family, their adult college-age kids, my nephew Quinn and niece Gemma, and me. It was just what we needed as we explored how we would celebrate holidays moving forward. Grateful. For the Christmas holidays we repeated the gathering with a buffet dinner, shuffleboard rematch tournament, White Elephant Gift Exchange, and celebration of Quinn’s college graduation and new job.
Shuffleboard competition.
Now, to today. This is the second week of a holiday staycation. I found myself hopeful this holiday, due to the recovery progress our family member is making. I exchanged a small number of holiday gifts with bio and chosen family, electroplated glass trees with LED lights from MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art in NY, which for me signified the light and hope of Christmas and New Year. Grateful!
MoMA Holiday Trees
Look Ahead to 2025
As I look ahead to 2025, I resolve NOT to make New Year’s Resolutions, for exception of this list, a blueprint for living a heathy life: I resolve to follow-through on my intentions with discipline, pay attention to what I resist, forgive myself for missteps and make amends as quickly as I’m able, play more this year, to remind myself of progress, not perfection, say the Serenity Prayer as needed, live a self-examined life as authentically as possible with an open mind and heart, and leave a legacy. Yes, I’m ambitious!
Intentions, not resolutions
In 13 days, I turn 75. My former long-term partner and chosen family, Cindy and I, are celebrating my birthday at Lola’s Hi/Lo Lounge, named Madison’s Best New Restaurant, known for it’s 1960s vibe, small plates menu, and cocktails including mocktails. Later this month, I celebrate, for the 16th or 17th year, a joint birthday celebration during Madison’s Winter Restaurant Week with chosen family member, Leanne. At the end of the month with Leanne and spouse Rene, we join friends Patti and Kendra in Minnesota for an extended weekend. Yes, play more!
I’ll continue to write for my blog, including in January, launching the second series of Trump’s Presidency, The Toilet Zone: Second Flush. I’m still working on my memoir, Progress, Not Perfection, revisiting some of the series outlined in the anniversary reminiscence, Celebrating a Decade of Mixed Metaphors, Oh My! There’s still work to complete on the Hotel Bar short film, originally conceived as a web series, yet life and death happened including the pandemic, the deaths of loved ones, and the list goes on.
View from my desk in the writing alcove of my home.
I’ll continue my therapy, self-care, and Mounjaro journey. The project I’m most excited about is my Tiny Home. Big Dream, how I envision the last home of my life in collaboration with loved ones. Stay tuned.
Tiny home, BIG dream.
Yes, you can be sure, I’ll write about it and most likely overshare on social media. I’m like an open book, you get to choose whether to read it, or not!
Happy New Year!
Photo Credit: Monica Jacobs
Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!
Intentions & The Lessons of Progress, Not Perfection
Dispatch from the Hideout: Omicron Edition
Dispatch from the Hideout: The End Is Here!
Memories Are Made of This: Grief & Gratitude
Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring?
Finding the Light in Dark Times