2024, my friend, was a big one.
Beautiful & gory & soft & bloody & squishy & a punch to the throat & light & tenderness & moving forward.
“Forward” was the word I'd set for it at the beginning of 2024.
It involved idiot lawyers & being homeless for five days & being forced to sign an NDA in my divorce. It was dark & heavy & a feather drug softly across the lips.
I was a morning bird, a night owl, entirely nocturnal. I found new tools for my creative practice. I made work I liked & work I didn't & a lot of work I just threw away.
I did my first art fair & can't wait to do more of them in 2025. It’s so much fun getting to watch people interact with my work in real-time.
I was brave despite being scared & sometimes I was neither of those things & I read you my poems & I loved that you wanted to hear them.
I was cringeworthy & authentic & felt icky & fake & showed you my underbelly.
I told you the worst thing I’d ever done.
I hit the worst depression day of my life & barely survived. I fell in love twice. I still repeated old unhealthy patterns, but I kept working towards changing them.
I finally learned a lesson the universe had been trying to teach me for fifteen months.
I found the most exquisite editor for my poetry manuscript. I wrote a lot. I started the Amethyst Collection, an ongoing one for which I still enjoy creating work.
I learned we were trauma-bonded. I learned that that meant you were traumatizing, not that we had bonded over what we’d been through.
I went to a zillion twelve-step & Buddhist meetings. I found a crazy cool sponsor who tells me she loves me & is a fellow artist.
I almost had to give up my dog babies so I could stay in a domestic violence shelter.
I started painting in collections, which had been one of my goals at the beginning of 2024. I was mostly sober. I worked on building my art business. I left him where he lay in the mud and then fell for another narcissist.
I mostly did what I set out to do in 2024. I got sidetracked & distracted, but my pillars remained, somehow, as the intentions I'd set.
I don't do resolutions or goals for a new year - only intentions.
I kept up with my therapy for PTSD. I had flashbacks & identified more triggers. I promised I'd stay.
I spent three days & two nights in the ICU. I went to the ER more times than I can remember.
I lived in the city, the country, next to a lake & in the woods. I dreamt up a lot & learned that hope can feel scary.
I meditated & was sober for most (?) of it. I gardened & went vegan for a while. I tried to get a fourth dog & changed therapists.
I wondered if healing PTSD was even possible. I struggled with this question a lot. Wise woman friends who’d been there told me it was.
I went on fun dates & very lackluster dates & drank so much Diet Coke & water & tea. I made friends with the gas station attendants in my new neighborhood.
I demanded you leave & you wouldn't & I reported you to the police & they didn't give a fuck.
I read a lot. I grieved.
I kissed good men & bad men & found a person who makes me feel safer than I ever have in my life.
I prayed to Tara (Buddhist goddess who showeth the way to those who are lost) & I prayed to trees. I pulled cards & pleaded with a higher power and spoke softly to it, too.
My best friend from Minnesota came to visit.
I checked if you’d watched my Instagram stories. I felt afraid to be alone at night. I cuddled exes.
I big-spooned my Great Dane. I took in a stray cat & firmly believe he's the most dope cat who has ever lived.
I finally got a car after a year & a half of being transportationless. I held a gallery show in my apartment.
I didn't sleep for a while & then I slept 18 hours a day for a while—cyclical. I healed some. I promised you I’d stay.
I’m still mulling over my intentions for 2025.
Thank you for being here with me. I’m coming into 2025 feeling all of the things.
Yours for another year,
Kait
P.S. I pulled an oracle card & it was “the seed” — creativity, beginnings, starting anew, the cyclical stunning nature of the natural world, go within.
The inner work is the gold.
