A DAY I N THE LIFE â—½ ENCOURAGEMENT
Here We Are
by Bekah Holland
By the time you’re reading this, we will have just wrapped up Christmas ... a season best described as magical, meaningful, and held together with double‑sided tape, caffeine, and pure determination.
​
Just kidding. I’m guessing most of us are still recovering from spending the last month in full turbo‑super‑hero mode. You know the drill: trying to find the perfect gifts (unless you have teenagers, in which case you should stop trying and just wrap up money ... trust me), bouncing between school parties, concerts, recitals, award ceremonies, and performances that all somehow happen in the same two‑week window, and attempting to create holiday magic while quietly praying to win a lottery ticket you never actually bought because life is already expensive enough.
​
If you made it through, congratulations. We survived. And now, here we are ... staring down a brand‑new year, full of possibility, fresh starts, and all the hope January is supposed to bring.
​
Here’s the honest part.
​
While you’re reading this at the beginning of a new year, I’m writing it at the end of a long, heavy one. And I’ll be real with you ... I met the saddest version of myself this year, and I haven’t completely found my way back to her yet.
​
Through ongoing circumstances, overwhelming loss, and the ache of watching people I love fight battles I can’t protect them from, something in me dimmed. Add in watching a world that feels harsher and more divided than I ever imagined, and suddenly I didn’t recognize the woman staring back at me in the mirror. My eyes used to sparkle. I used to feel hopeful.
This version of me felt like a stranger.
And yet ... I still showed up.
​
I got out of bed. I did what needed to be done. I smiled and laughed in the right places. I showed up for my kids, my husband, my family, my friends. Everyone… except myself.
​
It’s easy for me to hide my own pain. I tell myself it’s because I don’t want to add to anyone else’s worries ... and that’s partly true. But if I’m being honest, it’s also because it feels safer to push the fear, hurt, and anger aside and sit alone with them in the quiet. In the dark. Where no one can hear the thoughts I don’t dare say out loud. The ones that whisper that I’m not enough, and never will be.
​
Not long ago, I broke.
​
Not my usual quiet, tidy breaking ... the kind you can sweep under a rug and pretend didn’t happen. This was messy and raw. Tears turned into sobs. The carefully stacked walls came down like a house of cards. And my husband and kids saw me shatter.
​
I thought I was failing them in that moment.
​
But they didn’t drown in my pain. They didn’t recoil or judge my fractured heart. They did what they’ve always done ... they showed up. They held space. They loved me right where I was. Where I saw weakness, they saw strength. Where I felt fragile, they reminded me there is beauty in ashes, and that these cracks aren’t flaws ... they’re openings that let the light in.
​
This place ... the dark one ... it isn’t where we belong.
​
If you find yourself there, please hear me when I say this (and know I’m saying it to myself too): you are not lost. You are not a burden. You are not too much. No matter what the quiet voices try to convince you of, your darkness is not your home.
​
I’m still here, gathering myself piece by piece. Learning that it’s okay to fall apart sometimes. That it’s okay to feel lost, as long as we keep finding our way back. Back to the people who feel like home. And back to ourselves ... who we were created to be, and who we’re still becoming.
​
I don’t really subscribe to the whole “new year, new me” thing. But I do believe in fresh starts. In first steps. In second and third chances. In choosing hope again ... even when it feels fragile.
​
So if January finds you hopeful, I’m celebrating that with you. And if it finds you tired, bruised, or still healing ... you’re not behind. You’re not failing. You’re just human.
​
And that, my friend, is more than enough.
​
“You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress.”
Sophia Bush