This was the year I wanted to get published. This was the year I wanted to fall in love again. This was the year I wanted to take my time with grief, and with caring myself back to wholeness, whenever that’d come. To take my time settling further into my belovedness, the innate unchangeable truth.

I have done some of these things. Not all. I am collecting publication rejections with pride. I am grateful for what I’ve come to, and for what I’ve been kept from. I am grateful for the safety and health of my family and friends. I am grateful for the new people I worry about and love, people I didn’t know a year ago. I am now grateful for the warmth of sun across my nose and cheeks, warmth that slowly spreads down my face and neck, across the rest of my body. I am grateful to still be able to be moved by poetry, this week by “Miss You” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi in this month’s Poetry magazine. I’m grateful the tears come easy.

My hair is falling out in larger quantities again. The overdue assignments are piling up. I feel the draw toward panic, toward sadness. The tempting feeling that nobody could understand the things that I feel, so there’s no use in telling them. But that just isn’t true. 

So what’s next? What’s left of the year? What’s in me that I can spend, can give? What’s in me to conserve? To keep to myself in the quiet places.

Resist, Mele. Resist hurry, resist despair. Resist overwhelm. Resist overwhelm. Resist taking in too much information. Resist committing to more than you can handle. Resist thinking too highly, or too lowly of yourself, tempting as they both may be.

Take stock, and see what you’d like to remain.