The Bittersweet Gift Of Impermanence

When I was in college it felt like ringing in the new year was no more than chasing fun. Whatever the decision was for the activity, others seemed to be having more fun than I was and it always felt stressful. Then, in my mid twenties, Tia Cris, mom’s elder sister, mobilized our extended family to go somewhere near Bogotá together for the holidays. When she passed a few years later, heartbroken and because she was the glue that kept us together, those family trips came to an end.

Then, Colombia started to open up for international travel and became safer. We hadn’t had the luxury of seeing our own country while we were growing up in it due to violence. That’s when my sister’s family and I, started taking small trips to see different parts of the country, finally. This was how we found the amazing location, the gem, where I do the Nuqui retreat. A location so far off the beaten path that it took me three or four years to figure out how to bring a group of people there. And now, it has been going for nine years.

Then my dad got very ill. And even those trips came to an end in order to be with him and my mom through all the comings and goings in and out of the hospital. He passed. And not long after, COVID hit. And then a kind of intense, different sort of winter froze everything that grew for the next couple of years.

When we were able to congregate again, yet another configuration took place, our now, very reduced family— my sister, mom, nephew and I— and my cousin Fill’s family. We picked a different little farm to visit every December. But this time, with this group, it was known that I was queer, and it was known that I was trans. Before, those things had either not been out in the open or not readily admitted into space. Which meant that that part of me didn’t exist while I was there. So my heart was always divided between two places that were impossible to feel simultaneously. My heart in the States, while my family was right there with me. This time, though, all parts of me could have a soft landing and feel real. And it finally felt like I wasn’t chasing anything. Like I could just be with my people with no other stress or strain. And my life could exist in its wholeness. The hardship of the years prior had been very helpful in distilling what matters.

And this year, Sarah got to be there for all of it. It was beyond wonderful. Even with the endless family dynamics that are always at play. In years past, we made, and I’ve written about this, one human sized ‘old year’, or año viejo doll and burnt it, along with things we didn’t want to keep and our wishes for the new year. This new year we were in the desert, and due to fire hazard, there was no way of lighting one of those without it being dangerous. So we decided to make little personalized ones.

I’m telling you all of this because I find it interesting how one of these is a ritual created by my family that kind of became a ritual almost by accident, and the second is a ritual that was handed down from my culture, which we, as a family have decided to keep. But I find it fascinating how necessity and time have required those same rituals to permeate and change in order to keep their immediacy. What a glorious thing, to be able to change and adapt things as we grow.

So on the 31st, we set up a shop and with old table cloths and aprons and all sorts of scraps and little treasures from the costumes box from our apartment, and my mom’s sewing kit, we set up a table, and each made a personalized representation of our year to burn at midnight. This was mine. My Beautiful Monster.

But to be honest, when it came down to it, I didn’t want to burn it. Not this year. Because though the year had a steep learning curve and a lot of minutia that is not part of my strong-suit, it was hands down the best year of my life. I made art this year, a love project that went all the way to fruition. I spent time with practically EVERYONE I love. Good amounts of time. I rebuilt connections with friends I had not been in touch with in years. I played and saw music and started to rebuild the dream of getting the band back together. I started to reshape my yoga community. I kept growing in all the ways. And mostly, all of me is now present in all the spaces of my life in all the ways. And I have, because I am incredibly lucky, love, friendship and family. So much so, that it feels sometimes like too much.

It’s not that there weren’t bad things to the year. There definitely were a few, quite complex and complicated, that are quite persistent. It’s just that after everything was said and done, the good way outweighed the bad and I feel like I am able to be in my life in a way that I have simply not been able to up until this point.

And that is the beauty of impermanence. Things are constantly changing and shifting. We must burn the old year, no matter how much we loved it, or hated it, or felt nothing for it, because after all, it is also simply just a moment in time. The same as we must allow things to morph and change as they do to settle into their own new vibration. They can still maintain the signature of what makes them great. There’s the rub, the bittersweetness of it all.