The Year Love Refused to Die

The Year Love Refused to Die

As the year 2020 comes to a close, we all wait, hope, pray that 2021 will be better. I want to name 2020 as The Year Love Refused to Die and draw on a few examples professionally and personally. 

No doubt you know at least one person who contracted COVID-19, and some of us know loved ones who died from it. Of course, COVID was not the only Grim Reaper to visit. There were natural disasters around the world. There were Black lives lost through police brutality. And life continued to bring her usual announcements to loved ones that cancer has come to call. Yes, the year 2020 shoved death and loss in our faces, relentlessly, like a nasty debt collector. 

I don’t need to list all the other myriad losses we experienced this year because I know you have been keeping your own list. With all of these losses comes grief, which is never a hand we want to be dealt. Grief can be debilitating when it comes in spades, and boy did it come in spades.

2020 brought us many a wake-up call. In fact, it seems like the phone just kept ringing. I want to focus on one call to answer: the call to recognize how precious life is. The call to open your heart, not despite but because of the sadness and sorrow that grief brings.

Grief is your joy returning. Imagine a lovely smooth gray rock sitting innocently under a large tree branch that drips water upon it each time it rains. Over time that continual dripping carves the stone into a different shape, a shape that can hold the water. Imagine your tears are that stream of water carving a new shape inside you to hold the joy that is returning. 

Grief is at once a contractive experience, drawing us away from life into ourselves, and an expansive process, if we allow ourselves to feel the pain. As we journey through the process of sadness and sorrow, our heart has a chance to expand as we ultimately return to life, valuing it more than ever.

When you think about all the types of losses you have endured this year, you might consider how much you have taken for granted everyday mundane routines. You drop your kids off at school and go to work. You stop at the gym after work to take a spin class. You are tired of cooking, so you gather your kids and off to the pizza palace you go for dinner. You feel lonely and call a friend for a drink. You go visit your mother in a nursing home. These things disappeared in 2020. Do you value them differently now?

Can we talk about this year through the lens of the enduring human spirit and love? I am naming 2020 as The Year Love Refused to Die. Think about it. Did you stop loving or caring for the important people in your life? No. You found creative ways to keep up your connections. One of my clients, whose mother has dementia and is in a nursing home, has not been allowed to visit her mother during the pandemic. She started calling her daily. She sent hand-written love letters to her weekly. She called a nursery and had enough flowers delivered to fill a small florist. She had her mother’s favorite ice cream flavors delivered.

At the beginning of sheltering in place, my dear friend of 30 years—I’ll call her Elizabeth—was going through a nasty divorce that involved infidelity and betrayal. She was having difficulty getting out of bed and concentrating at work. All she could focus on was her anger and sadness. Then, her beloved dog of 12 years went into kidney failure due to cancer. She had to make the brave choice to euthanize her. She was devastated. She would not be allowed to come into the veterinarian’s building due to COVID. So I jumped in the car with my dog, Seamus, and met her in the vet’s parking lot. Together we got into the front seat of Elizabeth’s car with her sweet dog. Together we sat, holding one another as we said goodbye to her through tears and hugs. Elizabeth went home to shelter alone, without her spouse, without her beloved companion. Afterward, she thanked us profusely for showing up in love. We couldn’t take away her grief and sorrow, but my dog and I could demonstrate our love. 

Nine months into the pandemic, a dear friend I will refer to as Lisa received a terrifying call no mother ever wants to get. Her precious ten-year-old daughter was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer than only one in a million get. It was gut-wrenching. We all imagined the worst-case scenarios. How could we not? It was so unfair. This vibrant, intelligent, creative, artistic, kind, loving ten-year-old had barely begun to experience life. Was it going to be snatched away? 

As I was getting off the phone with my friend, I mentioned I was going down the street to take an outdoor Zumba dance class. When I got to class, I received a text from Lisa who knew the Zumba teacher. “Will you please ask, Natalie, humbly, if her class will dedicate their dance to my daughter today? Please ask them to dance like they have never danced before with all their love.” I conveyed the message to Natalie and the class. There were gasps and awws. There were tears as they unanimously agreed to dedicate the class to Lisa’s daughter. The entire class showed up in love. 

As a former hospice bereavement counselor, I learned the importance of grieving, of feeling our sadness to allow our joy to return. I remember sitting with a lovely woman whose teenage son was killed by a drunk hit-and-run driver one night. We met weekly for thirteen months. We rarely talked. Mostly, I held her hand while she sobbed and declared she no longer wanted to live. Understandable. A major factor that kept her here was the fact she had another young son who needed her. The loss of a child is not the natural order of life. In fact, it appears to be the hardest type of loss to recover from. But this beautiful woman chose to be courageous and stay on this earth to show up with love for her other son who is now in his late twenties and thriving. So is she. Her joy eventually returned. 

I am not suggesting you allow your grief for the innumerable losses of 2020 to bring you to your knees. I am inviting you to feel the anger, sadness, and fear in small spurts as you can so that your joy can return.

If you enjoy movies, check out the Indie film, Love Sarah. A film about loss, healing, and recommitment to living. Plus, you will drool over the beautiful pastry concoctions. 

At the close of this year, I invite you to take a few moments to reflect on the ways you showed up with love. If you want to share, I would love to hear from you!

If you are a newbie to my list, I send out a special, “Welcome!” I’m Martina Barnes, and I help women build Reliable Personal Power in all areas of their lives. Did you know that learning to embrace your emotions without allowing them to take over is one of the key components to creating Reliable Personal Power? If you’d like to learn more, join me for a discovery call. 

With love,

I am Reliably Yours

Martina