Emotional Healing: A New Year – Assess And Flow

By DR. TED WIARD
Golden Willow Retreat 

A new year, 2021, has arrived and with that benchmark, many different emotions arise.

For most people 2020 was an excruciating year with a COVID pandemic that ravaged our world, politics that divided people so deeply that humanity seemed to be forgotten and systemic problems rising like molten lava through covered fissures that are demanding attention and reparation.

Moving into a new year does not magically remove these life-threatening issues, but what a new year can give is an opportunity of pause and reflection. With a pause and reflection, there is opportunity to glean strengths, wisdom and commonalities, in order to build a stronger emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical foundation in order to stand in the present while moving towards the future.

In reviewing last year, and the years past, there were amazing victories in the midst of a devastating year.

Science is moving forward with vaccines, front-line heroes, communities working together, a new level of gratitude in areas that had been taken for granted, proof of flexibility and resiliency within individuals, families, and communities, the arts helping warm the heart, people taking off blindfolds and speaking out on injustices towards people and the earth (with the momentum for action) and remembering family and love.

Due to the societal status quos being disrupted, people demonstrated unimaginable levels of resiliency and flexibility in many areas from mask wearing, working at home, striving to keep education moving forward, having to learn new ways to communicate and gather, and using social and natural science to survive and transition in the midst of enormous and dangerous chaos.

I like to think of disruptive times similar to rafting a river and in the midst of the rapids there is a high level of survival to keep the raft upright to allow survival and some level of safety. Improvising, implementing learned skills, and learning new skills in the middle of those rapids is how the river is navigated in the middle of survivorship.

After the rapids, there is usually an eddy in which the river runners have the opportunity to pull over, regroup, and look back in order to celebrate making it through that turbulent time, but also see how to improve from what was experienced, and make sure that there is healing from chaos of those rapids, as well as any weaknesses that were realized in the midst of survivorship. And from that paused time in the eddy, the boatman acknowledges the safety and steers back into the currents to continue to ride the river.

This New Year is an important eddy to stop and remember humanity, similarities, rectifying injustices to people and the earth, and bridge differences so that those differences collaborate and make us stronger and safer to flow down the river of life with more strength as an individual, family, community, nation, and world.

Each person’s conscious contribution leads to macro change and will allow survivorship, joy and connection. That is what the world can take away from the benchmark of this New year.

Let’s do it! I wish you well, and until the next article, take care.

Golden Willow Retreat is a nonprofit organization focused on emotional healing and recovery from any type of loss. Direct questions or learn more about virtual grief groups to Dr. Ted Wiard, EdD, LPCC, CGC, founder of Golden Willow Retreat at GWR@newmex.com or call at 575.776.2024.

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