New Holiday Traditions

Change is embedded into our lives from the minute we are born, so why has it been difficult to accept I won’t be flying home this year?

For the first time in 28 years, I won’t be flying home to California for the holidays. Why? It’s a mixture of wanting to play it extra-safe in light of the new virus variant coupled with flu season and struggling with familial ties. It’s still hard. I feel like booking a last minute ticket, paying extra, and hopping on a plane for a cross-country flight. The only thing that is keeping me from doing that is knowing that I have the opportunity to take what I’ve been given and making the best of it.

I feel sadness coupled with joy as I write this and try to focus on the positive. In my case that would be the opportunity to form a new tradition this year. This will be the first year I spend Christmas with my boyfriend since we made it official five years ago. Yup, you read that right. Every December I’d disappear for a whole month until New Years and I loved it. From this experience, I am starting to realize that what we focus on grows. If I focus on the gratitude I feel for my life in light of the current circumstances then that’s what will become bigger. It follows the simple rule of what captures our attention strengthens itself.

Change is sometimes something we choose and sometimes something we don’t. In my case this is…