I don’t usually do New Year’s resolutions, I haven’t for a long time.  It just seems weird to save up whatever change you desire in your life for a particular date on the calendar.  

Don’t get me wrong, I have lots of stuff to work on.  My grief has made me very aware of my ‘opportunities for improvement’ and added some big ones to the list.

We are changed by our losses.  Irrevocably. We don’t have a choice in whether we are changed, but we do get to choose how we change.  

Alan Wolfelt encourages us to appreciate our transformations.  I struggled with that for a long time.  I didn’t feel transformed.

I’ve come to believe I had the scale of transformation wrong.  I was looking for something big, all-encompassing. Steve Rogers to Captain America kind of stuff.  For me, and I suspect for most of us, transformation doesn’t happen that way, it happens in small increments.  It’s granular and surprising.

One day we’re able to appreciate the beauty in a tree, a cloud, a butterfly or bird.  One day we find that we’ve shed the impulse to judge someone else who is struggling and find compassion. One day we spontaneously engage in an act of kindness.  Or we embrace a memory of the loved one we’ve lost and the tears that come with that memory – because we automatically enfold the love behind that memory.

For many of us, the key to recognizing and appreciating our transformation lies in awareness of those granular changes in us that represent small steps in our chosen direction – and, occasionally, looking back at ourselves over the course of our grief journey and before.  It’s a matter of perspective.. and patience.

This year, I resolve to be more aware of the small changes in my life and more open to integrating them into a conscious, step-by-step transformation of me into who I hope to become.