Sometimes you just gotta burn stuff

I have a pretty sweet little life, with a lot of very good in it. I've been kickboxing lately, which has helped my mood more than you can know. I have a lot of people who seem to care about me, and how lucky am I in that? I have a job I don't hate, animals seem to like me, and I laugh easily, which is a benefit in today's world.

But today's post is not about the happy. It's about letting go of the suck.

I thought I was celebrating a Yule tradition - building a fire, writing down the things that have been hurting this year, and burning them in the fire. I was wrong - that is a New Year's tradition, but I did it today, so I'm writing about it today.

When my kids were younger, in addition to our Christmas festivities, I started adding some elements of different winter celebrations into our own December. This was fun and educational - we told stories and performed small rituals and expanded our own understanding of the people around us. We played dreidel and ate doughnuts on the 8th night of Chanukah, we exchanged ornaments and told stories on Sinterklaas day, talked about Santa Lucia, told Kwanzaa stories - and we lit candles and observed the Winter Solstice, even if it was just reading a book and talking about the return of the sun. We haven't done these things in a long time, if for no other reason than the kids are older and don't care much, and I work.

The past two years have been tough, though, and I felt a need to recognize today as more than just another day. As I left my office today, I noticed how dark it felt (and bizarrely warm,) and I needed some sort of ritual to mark my intentions for the coming year. (Even as I type this, I am realizing how obvious it is that this is a New Year's ritual, but it's done. And it's fitting, sort of - the dark of the longest night cleansing us of the past year's garbage, the return of the sun marking the return of happiness and goodness. Stop nagging me, I can do it again on New Year's!)

Okay, anyway. A lot of my 2017 suck has involved the state of the union, and my worries about the future. A lot more of my 2017 suck has involved my own insecurities. Insecurity feeds my depression, and adds up to a whole lot of suck. So I wrote all the worst of it down. (I should note that my son was sitting at the table with me as I was writing, giving me notes on what I could do to change a lot of it. None of his suggestions were useful, but he was asking me if I really felt it was healthy to focus so heavily on the negative in life. I told him yes, be quiet, Mommy's thinking. He remained unconvinced. But obviously this is working, see how much better my mood is?)

I burned that shit to the ground, and as I burned the suck, I meditated on letting go of insecurity and despair and fog...and welcoming peace and good. And sending it out into the world. It's the first time in a long time I've actively cultivated a loving-kindness meditation of any sort, and it made me feel so much better.

Or maybe that's just the kickboxing.

Say hello to my little Julbocken.

Blessed Yule to you all!