Should old acquaintance be forgot?

Well here we are, bringing in a new year. I worked earlier today and placed some long acting reversible contraceptives (LARCS) in some patients and cheerfully called after them as they were leaving “New year, new you!” This year feels like a big year for all of us to get through. The pandemic in and of itself was one thing; then you add all the black lives lost due to racism and bigotry, a contentious election and my own suicide attempt and it is very easy to shut the door on 2020, wash our hands of the nightmare and walk into 2021 thinking everything will be better. In AA we are taught we will not regret the past nor wish  to shut the door on it,.. And I think those are wise words and ones I try to live by. Even though this year has been horrible for so many people, there have also been so many silver linings and joys that have happened despite everything else. I think we all learned to slow down and to take stock in what is most important in our lives. I know I did. It is definitely a year of reflection and just doing the best that we can. 

There were so many days when I would trudge to work, don my personal protective equipment, care for my patients who felt that their concerns were an emergency and must be addressed immediately, pandemic be damned, where I would question what was the point of all of it. I saw my friends with children make the impossible choice of whether to have their children do school at home versus in person and my teacher friends who didn’t have a choice at all and then everyone who struggled with how strict to be with social distancing while also meeting our very human need of connection.  It has been a rough one. But my historian friends remind me that we as a nation and a society have weathered much harsher years. We are resilient and we will thrive.

I guess I want to end this post with the way my home group of AA closes its beginner’s meeting, reading a passage from the “Big Book” that I already started above. They are the promises of what we will receive if we do the hard work. And I wish everyone as they enter into 2021, these promises, because we have all done the hard work of surviving this year.

We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far we have gone down, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self centeredness will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook on life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.  We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Are these extravagant promises? [Heck yes they are!!] They are being fulfilled among us. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, they will always materialize IF we work for them. Page 83-83 of Alcoholics Anonymous