Year of the Tree

Every December, I do a “year in review” journaling session. It takes days - usually meandering over the week between Christmas and New Year’s - and many, many pages, as I recall, month by month, the events and accompanying feelings of the previous year. 

I’ve been journaling regularly since my somewhat solitary, bookish, horse-girl adolescence, and still write at least a few times a week, but this annual exercise helps put the year in perspective, to see it as more of a whole. I notice patterns (often, frustratingly, repeated from previous years). I revisit past hurts and joys. I forgive weaknesses and failings I berated myself for while living through them. And I conclude by setting some kind of intention, energy, word or feeling I want to bring with me into the new year.

Spoiler alert: 2024 was really hard. It was sad and scary and disappointing in many ways. Beautiful and surprising in others. There were bright moments with family, with friends, in nature - sometimes all three. There were lonely and dark stretches of time that felt like an endless spiral of bad news. I realized, in retrospect, that I was often operating from a place of fear and scarcity, due to the challenge of a new job after 7+ years of running my own business, having to confront the reality of aging, mortal bodies - my own and my loved ones’ - or any number of other hurdles.

There were so many times I felt I had lost ground, that I was relearning things I thought I had already figured out. My reactivity to difficult situations, my resistance to discomfort. How tight my mind and body become when I’m adamant that things shouldn’t be, just can’t be, this way.

Ultimately, though, Nature works in cycles, not straight lines.  And, much as we like to forget it, we humans are a part of Nature, making our insistence on linear progress pretty amusing. Things are born, they grow bigger, they get smaller, they die. We, and all of our many trials and tribulations, are no different. It takes a long time for life to regrow, and we can’t rush a process of new beginnings, recalibration, reconfiguring. So, as I’ve mused before on this very blog, there’s nowhere to get to, and no rush to get there. 

As a someone recently reminded me, the seeds of freedom are hidden within suffering. The challenges that pain presents teach us the lessons that lead us farther along the path to liberation. Setbacks aren’t really setbacks, because without them there would never be any progress at all. We hold grief in one hand and gratitude in the other, because we must honor and feel the sorrow of endings and losses in order to make space for joy - without one we cannot have the other. 

Before the year in review, in fact just days before Christmas, I told friends that 2024 could, and I quote, “fuck all the way off.” Good riddance, moving on. But through this reflection and the injection of some kindness and gentleness, I was able to grieve and then befriend 2024, for all that it wrought. For all it brought me, all it took away. All I intentionally or unintentionally left behind.

As we start this year, I’m moving towards a sense of grounded flexibility - of feeling less knocked around by life’s inevitable waves or strong winds, without being rigid. Deeply and firmly rooted, yet still able to sway in and adapt to the breeze. Asking for and accepting help and support, leading with kindness, compassion and gentleness. Owning my story and celebrating who I am, authentically, not who I think people want me to be or who I think I should be. Trusting myself.

For me, it all conjures the image of a beautiful sequoia. 

And so while 2025 is for many the year of the Snake, for me it is the year of the Tree.