Both/and
Here on the last day of calendar 2024, I am thinking about the past year. In so many ways it was a good year for me, but yet it feels wrong to say that without contextualizing it in the midst of so much heartbreak on the planet, and also in my own life. But isn’t this the condition of our lives? It is the lesson I learn over and over again—that we live the richest lives when we realize we must hold the tension between what brings joy and what brings pain. And that they each inform the other.
The heartbreak part of the year has been massive. Unrelenting eco-cide and genocide around the world, extractive, racialized capitalism run amok, both often sold by their purveyors as necessary to protect democracy and our way of life. Natural disasters, such as the one closest to me, Hurricane Helene, causing death and destruction, coming faster and stronger as humans continue to degrade their Mother Earth. An election won on the platform of hate, fear, and selfishness, and lost by those not reaching out to people estranged from politics as usual. The perception that the problems are and will be too huge and complicated to intervene in, a perception that serves the needs of those in power.
And every year brings personal grief. This year, the death of a brother-in-law, and a continuation of estrangement from a loved one—too personal and private to explain but after several years of (therapy and) attempting to reconcile, reconciling to the fact that I cannot do anything to heal the break other than wait, as I’ve been asked to do.
A much longed-for wish fulfilled this year was finding a publisher for the book I had been writing and editing for over five years, Ancestral Landscapes. And at almost the same time, LaHoma Romocki and I signed a contract for a second edition of Going to School in Black and White with the same publisher. Both of these are expected to come out in the later part of 2025; I am excited for the platform that both of these books will give us/me to engage in public conversations about our responsibilities as humans to care for each other.
The unexpected gift of the year was finding myself in several communities of people who bring me hope, people with whom I share my concern for a fraught world and with whom I can share my knowledge and talents. This year I found myself working with organizations, using my photography and my research skills in ways that created new interpersonal connections and facilitated the work of social justice. This work was, for me, an antidote to despair.
This was the first year of living (part-time) in my house in the mountains, built on land my grandparents once farmed. I have chronicled some of my experience there in this blog through the (irregular) series woods*creek*meadow (and will soon post a new offering). I have learned so much and have so much still to learn from this land and being in that place. It is with extreme gratitude that I feel I belong there.
To end this new year’s reflection, I will say again, in only slightly different words, what I think is so important to know at this moment. The world and our experience of it not one thing or another. What we experience as good and bad happen at the same time. The best life we can have is to embrace all of it. To find ways, to be open to opportunities, to use whatever is ours to give, and by giving to others, to experience our best selves. We are not helpless. We can do whatever it is we can do, so we should not feel hopeless. We can/must continue to grieve the losses even as we celebrate the beauty and the good. Shadow and light. Both/and.