Freedom to Start Anew

New Year’s Eve wall in our room on T8, Bc Children’s Hospital

This morning, I was awoken by the sound of Violet’s whispers with the nurse. “Did you get any sleep, Violet?” she asks softly. I want to answer for her. Not nearly enough. But I don’t. I’m trying to stop doing that.

It is, of course, difficult. So much of my life is answering questions on her behalf.

When the nurse departs, I slip my eye mask off my face and stretch. My back is stiff. Sleeping on a concrete slab for days will do that to you. At this point, though, after so many countless nights on hospital couches, it almost seems gratuitous to bother bringing in a soft top. I’ve adapted enough. A stiff back is the least of my worries.

But wait…I catch myself. The least of my worries. What are my worries, this fine New Year’s morning?

That’s what we do, right? As humans. We wake up to the fog of our dreamy slumber and assess. I, literally, am looking out the window of our room on the 8th floor of the Acute Care building at a misty, grey landscape that is obscuring the lines of the trees and buildings outside, trying to make sense through the veil. Orienting myself. What is below? Oh yes. The courtyard. The Research Facility. Oak Street.

I am in the hospital. Violet is fighting relapsed cancer. It is 2026.

Now I know who I am, and what my life looks like, and what I am supposed to think and feel. I am supposed to be worried. I am supposed to be tired and sad and scared. I am supposed to be beaten down.

Afterall, life has been tough for such a long, long time.

 The holidays took everything out of me. I have been slipping – slowly deteriorating in stability and soundness of mind. Perimenopause is hitting hard. The thing I’ve feared for a long time due to my own history and hormone issues has begun to rear its ugly head, and with it, an inability to maintain intended control over myself and “my life”. I have been trying to give myself grace. I was likely always going to struggle in this way and considering the circumstances (in all of my research, each article on menopausal mental health emphasizes the significance of external stressors contributing to the intensity of symptoms), it would be strange not to be tumbling down the rabbit hole. And with the compounding effects of holiday emotions – the expectations and the anxiety and the overwhelm – it was a rollercoaster of epic proportions.

And I’ll say it – I don’t want to, but I will – the fear that this might be our last one together was there, pulsing in every moment, evident in all of the extra wrapping paper strewn all over the living room floor.

Presents we couldn’t afford and didn’t need. Compensation for all of the things I can’t control and all of the pain I have been wanting to soothe and distract from and somehow, for one morning, make ok.

I promised Matt I wouldn’t do it this year. I promised I wouldn’t “spend”, wouldn’t stuff the stockings full of crap that will be abandoned under the bed. But apparently, I didn’t have nearly the self-control I thought I did…in so, so many ways this year.

We came into this, our 7th round of treatment, with the lingering ghosts of my Christmas depression. I didn’t want to, because one of my superpowers in life is the ability to “get my mind right” before a good fight. If there is anything I have learned to master, it is the art of intentional positivity and focus when we tackle these weeks in the ward. This time, however, I didn’t have the chance to catch my breath.

But now, looking out this window while Violet slaves away at her Kandi making, her colorful array of pony beads splayed out across her bedside table, I realize that at some point between the white-knuckle drive across the Coquihalla on Sunday and now, I have regained my solid ground.

Maybe the hormones settled. Maybe that epic finale of Stranger Things distracted me. Maybe my morning coffee and motivational YouTube pep talk from Dr. Joe set me straight. Whatever it was, I’m back on top, Baby.

Forgetting and remembering. Forgetting and remembering. The endless cycle. Living in a tiny room inside an already chaotic mind is exhausting for me. I have always been one that thinks way too much. Feels way too much. But when you have nothing to do almost all of the time but think and feel, things get ever more carried away.

I’ve realized that my life, for a long time, has been about this dance in a profound way. I am not in my life. That lack of action and agency, that uncertainty and total absence of control, is threatening to destroy my sanity every minute of the day. And so, my job, my work, is to stay on top of it. To find a frame of mind that makes meaning and sense of this chaos, and allows us to navigate this misty, foggy obscurity.

Lately, it’s been hard. Harder than before. Harder, maybe, in part because I have always been one that feels so much for others. That cares. And so many people right now that I care about are navigating their own struggles and pain and grief. Loved ones have passed unexpectedly. Illnesses have taken others down. Marriages are ending. Friendships are crumbling. Children are leaving the nest. We aren’t the only ones that have had our rug pulled from under us. And that knowing that others are hurting and that I am so consumed by my own grief to be of any support to them is hard. It feels like being in my life the way I want to has been impossible.

I want to get back to work. I want to coach. I want to write. I want to be at home, planning holidays with my family, participating in the PAC, renovating my deteriorating house. Being there for my people.

But then I remember. Right now, I have a job. I am here, helping my daughter heal, learning to heal myself, remembering what it means to frame and focus. To everything there is a season. And the fog will lift, again. It will. It always does.

And…the most important reminder - the thing to remember, always remember: all we have is this moment. And in this moment, we get to choose.

We get to choose, right now, what we are seeing out the window. We get to choose how to make sense of things and what to focus on. We get to choose to give ourselves grace, to allow ourselves to hurt, to forgive ourselves for our shortcomings. We get to wake up every morning from the fog and configure our story fresh, in whatever way we want to. That is our power. And that is life. That’s all it is – making something out of what we’ve got. Remembering the good, making space for the new.

Sometimes I feel like my life is totally out of my hands. And it’s fair that I feel that way. I get full permission to feel frustration about that. It makes sense that I have been sad and scared. And I know that so many I care about are feeling the same. We deserve to give ourselves permission and grace to grieve. It’s important. It means we aren’t in denial, and it means that we care. We cared. Caring is good.

But our power is in remembering. It is in that place where we recognize the space between lost and found. The bridge. The trust that in uncertainty there is always access to faith, to refocusing. Eventually we realign. Things are always changing, making way for the new. When I remember this, I am able to flow. I am able to let go and go with the stream. I am able to understand that there is no supposed to when it comes to how I view things and how I feel. I don’t have to wake up in the morning and go through a checklist to “reorient” myself to the stories of yesterday. I can rewrite them, when I choose. When I am ready.

New Year’s is an opportunity. I like checkpoints. I like comebacks. I like fresh starts (I’m not great at finishing lines, but that’s another post for another day). I liked waking up today and realizing that, if I want to, I can do my best to let go of “2025” and start anew. I can choose the story. I can pick the things to focus on.

New Year’s resolutions make it feel like it needs to be black or white. I will do this or that from now on. That never works. But with grace and intention to shift, it can. When we recognize it is a process and a journey, we can make changes. We can shift our focus.

Forgetting and remembering. I remember now. I said to Violet, “it’s already Thursday, V! Four days in – that was fast! We’ll be home in no time on this one.”

She looked at me with melancholy. “But I like it here. I haven’t even had a chance to see my favorite nurses, or play games with Child Life, or have a visit from Auntie La.”

That’s her frame. And she’s right. I haven’t even had a chance this round to sneak out to visit Van Dusen Gardens or the tropical birds at Bloedel Conservatory. This is part of our life, now, too. And it’s not so bad. Lucy gets time with her grandparents. Matt is at home with her more this round, too, and they are sharing special Papa/Daughter time. Our anxious rescue dogs are learning to trust him more now that I’m out of the picture for a few days. And I’m adapting much of my professional work to be more functional within an unpredictable context, which, in turn, is lived experience to coach my clients on how to evolve their careers through their own life transitions.

And Violet – she reminds me every single day that my job is to take care of me. Ironically, that is the life lesson at the heart of all of my current curriculum. I don’t have control over anything outside of myself. Not really. None of us do. We are all vulnerable to life’s uncertainty – to loss, to grief. But we can figure out the storm within. We can work with what we have going on in our minds. We can reframe and refocus. We can find clarity in the fog.

I have no grandiose expectations of the year ahead, because there is so little I can predict. It is, without question, exhausting to live in uncertainty like this for so long, but I remember that we are all, really, in the same boat. I just don’t have the “luxury” of ignoring that fact. Or maybe, I have the gift of the constant reminder that I have ultimate control. I am the boss of me and me alone. I am at the centre of my own power to interpret this life and make what I want out of it. And what a gift. For 2026, that will be my “goal”. Whenever possible, remember. Go within. Trust. Allow. And with that, freedom.

Freedom to choose. Space to remember.