Before I really begin, I want to make something clear: I realize that the word "blessing" can give people pause. Its so often thrown around without much meaning, or used in a spiritual bypassing/toxic positivity type of way - i.e. "You should just count your blessings instead of being depressed! Look at all you have!". If you know me, you probably know how much I dislike this type of message. I don't think everything can be solved by having an "attitude of gratitude". I'm in no way going to try to convince people that the heat-breaking thing that happened to them this year is a "blessing in disguise". That kind of comment ignores people's incredibly real struggles, and I can tell you from first hand experience, it not only doesn't help, but it can actually do a lot of harm. So in case you were thinking that this was going to be some sort of "silver linings" post, please know, that's not the case. I think nearly every one of us can agree that 2021 was extremely rough on a global/societal level, especially when you add it on top of the absolute *$%&ing mess that was 2020. And that's coming from someone who, all things relative, had a personally pretty decent year in 2021. This post is actually my first year of utilizing my blessings jar, my own my mental and emotional process as I read through the contents, and the interesting patterns I noticed throughout the process.
In case you're wondering what a Blessings Jar" even is, it's a jar in which, at some determined frequency or randomly, you put in small reminders about your "blessings". Presumably, the idea is that at some point you take out those reminders and look at them, though I suppose there could be some other way of using it. Also, in case the word blessing is still throwing you off, I used it pretty loosely in writing down my own "entries". For me, it was often more like small things I felt grateful or thankful for. I simply use the word Blessings because the jar was given to me and literally has the phrase "Blessings Jar" on the front.
I've actually had the jar for a couple of years, but for some reason, I decided to utilize it in 2021. Maybe it was coming on the heels of 2020, feeling like there was so much I'd taken for granted before the pandemic (i.e. being able to hug loved ones and friends, which I still wasn't doing at the start of 2021), and I wanted a way to note these types of things so that I wasn't as inclined to take them for granted going forward. I don't honestly recall the "why", but I'm thinking it was something along these lines. I decided that every Friday, I'd write something, no matter how small, that I felt grateful for over the past week (i.e. a blessing). I folded the piece of paper and put it in the jar. Often I dated them, for purposes of looking back later, but sometimes I forgot. Some weeks, I added a "bonus" one if it was a particularly good week (or, more likely, I was having a tough time deciding which to write down, which I acknowledge is also a lucky indecision to have).
Today, the last day of 2021 as I write this, though I likely won't publish this until early 2022, I sat down and read through all of the "blessings" from the past year. I wrote them down, in no particular order, in a word doc, and them put them in a ziplock gallon bag that I labeled "2021 Blessings Jar", and put them in the container where I keep all of my old journals, so that I could free up the jar for 2022.
It was particularly interesting to look through all the "blessings" right after writing and posting my 2021 Year in Review blog, as I was able to compare and contrast my thoughts on the year as I looked back on it as a whole, and what I made note of week to week in my blessings jar. And while the blessings jar obviously focused more on the "good", for lack of a better word, often, it was the "good in the wake of the not so good". For instance, numerous of my "blessings' were about the love and support I received after difficult times during IVF, or during a particularly tough cycle of depression.
Looking through my weekly notes, there were a few themes that I found interesting.
- Vaccination. You could practically chronicle the timeline of vaccination release in the US Northeast based on my blessings notes over the weeks and months: "Parents fully vaccinated!"; "Got our first (vaccine) shot scheduled"; "First vaccination shot done". "Fully vaccinated!". "Got my booster!". This is one of those aspects of the year that it would be interesting to look back on five, ten, twenty years from now to see how it looks in retrospect. Will it become one of those "remember when we all got COVID vaccines?" Or will it become like the flu shot where it's just something I do annually and no longer feels like something worth noting? (Note: This is NOT a place to debate vaccination. Please don't try.) I also think the vaccine is a perfect example of something that I previously took for granted - which I realize is a privilege to be able to do so - but given the circumstances, changed into something that, I saw as a "blessing". I have had plenty of vaccines in my lifetime, both the regular ones, plus ones I've needed for traveling such as Hep A & B, typhoid, yellow fever. And I've always felt grateful that I'm able to do the type of travel that requires the vaccines, or that I don't have to worry about things like yellow fever and typhoid being threats in daily life. But I never felt so incredibly grateful for the actual vaccine itself, for the science behind it and the people who worked tirelessly on it and the access to it, which is a privilege many don't have. But now, I am, and I hope this is an area in which I continue to remember how lucky I am to have access to this.
- Support, love, and connection with family, loved ones, and friends was my by far the most frequently mentioned topic among my blessings. Some were more generic, saying things like "the support of my family after a difficult week". Some were more specific, in that they named a particular tough situation that my family supported me through. Some were more along the line of "lucky to have such thoughtful friends" when they made me feel special for my birthday, or "So great to finally see xyz friend (outside, fully vaxxed) for the first time since before the pandemic!". Others were simply about the fact that my family is so close (emotionally, though my parents live close), and that we've connected even more throughout the pandemic, even if virtually. This is no surprise to me, since I know how deeply I value deep connection overall, but I think it's especially notable in a time when so many of us, myself included, are feeling isolated and lonely.
- Some were bittersweet to re-read, knowing what I now know about the situation, especially as related to IVF. This is where it was particularly interesting to compare my week-to-week blessings with my overall thoughts from the year in review. For instance, one of the blessings said "We got one fertilized egg from our first retrieval!". I now know, as I re-read this, that the egg didn't make it to the blastocyst stage (the stage where it could be transferred). Or for the next retrieval, the one that said "Our embryo made it to blastocyst stage!". Looking back, I remember the heartbreak a week later when we found out that this embryo had complex genetic abnormalities that meant it wouldn't survive, and the additional absolute gut punch when I read the report from the testing and, not being prepared at all for it, saw that they included the sex of our embryo. And yet, despite how extremely difficult it was to lose two embryos back to back (yes, even with them still being in the lab, it felt like a horrible loss), looking back at these notes, I can almost feel again how excited and hopeful I was, even if reading them made me tear up with sadness at our losses. It's an interesting dichotomy, to be both sad at knowing the end result, but still appreciate how much joy it gave me in the moment, and hopefully will again as we go through subsequent IVF cycles.
- There were blessings in my jar related to things that I somehow totally forgot, with everything else that happened in 2021. For instance, one read "Us (Brian & I), family, loved ones all safe from hurricane/storm Ida". I know I'm extremely fortunate to be able to say this, because it means I wasn't greatly impacted by it, but I actually forgot that Storm Ida happened this year. It also reminds me how quickly we tend, as individuals and as a society, to move on from things that don't directly impact us in the day to day, and this gives me pause. I'm know there are so many other crises that happened this year that I've allowed to get swept away in the current of so much else, and it reminds me to be more cognizant of this - that just because something isn't making headline news anymore (or ever) doesn't mean it isn't still happening/the effects aren't still lingering, or that it doesn't matter.
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