on bitterness and letting go.

It's late and cold and I can't sleep. I'm waiting for my husband to get home from work, traveling in a car that is barely starting these days. My son sleeps in our bed, where he'll be snuggled and kept warm through the night.

I had the (rare) opportunity to spend the day alone, with my love pulling a double, and my son at school. I had all sorts of things planned, recipes to play with, things to be cleaned (always), organization and sorting and list-making. But instead I made some wickedly strong coffee and sat for a while, thinking about the new year. About goals and hopes and a million fractured dreams I want to start piecing back together. And I also thought about all the unseen challenges ahead of me, the ones consisting mainly of health and finances, and how insurmountable they seem at this time.

I don't have any true resolutions. I used to make lists on fancy paper and hang them up where I could see them and motivate myself. I don't do that anymore, mostly because I've crossed a new threshold when it comes to handing my fate back to my Creator, the one who's controlled it this entire time. But also because I've learned a lot in the fast few years, about the nature of unpredictability, of disaster, and the all-consuming vortex of physical anguish. So I don't have resolutions, per say, but I do hold hopes. I realized this a few days ago, while I was attempting to dance again, and marveling at my body's ability to remember movement, form, and flow. I cried with the joy of moving my body, and was indeed in pain later on and into the next day, but--oh, it was worth it in ways I can't name.

I have hopes, still burning quietly, to dance. To perhaps somehow use dance to heal pain in all of its myriad and heartbreaking forms.

This past year was the hardest yet. Procedure after procedure and so little relief. So much stress on myself and the ones I love most for so little. 2013 was the year of limitations. The year I heard myself say "I can't" more times in a few months than in the 27 years I've been on this earth. The year of bitterness and screaming endless strings of questions at a God I could barely believe was still listening. And that one night of dancing I mentioned? That's all it took to break me. To pull my disconnected spirit back into my body and make me see.

That this: to arc and wave, to make the gesture of my hand a poem, to sweat out a prayer, this is my catharsis. Nothing else will do. I am a mover, therefore, I must move. 2013 was the year that moving took on a different meaning, that through my rage I would have to adopt a new way of moving. It's so clear now. My pain is here to change me into something I can't fathom. All my energy has been expended on wanting to move my shoulders this way, because that is the way I've always done it. I have left no room for expansion; I have been in a cage. Because if I would just listen and shut up, I would hear my God speaking to me through the bones, telling me my new routine.

My life here in this home, the life I live as a wife and mother and maker, is crucially dependent on my exploration of this new way of moving. I need to move. It is not a want. And I have to be ready, that it will look and feel nothing like I know. I must relearn everything. It will be hard and humbling and probably very terrible, but I have to let the old me go.

I've even grown enough to know that just because I've made this leap into changing and becoming who I'm meant to be, doesn't mean that my problems will magically resolve. I know this. I will hurt. I might have surgery. I may only be able to dance a few times a month. But at this point, I'm ready. Hope never leaves my body, no matter how dire things become. I am stronger than I have given myself credit for and I am tired of allowing--literally allowing--the things that feed my soul to be taken from me.

I know who I am.