goodbye to 2023 (erin jean warde)

Maybe this year, we write cards to the dead, to remember them, to remind ourselves they are still a gift to us, and we still want them at our most high and holy feasts.

goodbye to 2023

My whole family now is just me and my mom. We finally decided this year, after intense struggle on both ends to come up with a “Christmas List,” that we don’t want to exchange gifts. I could not be happier with the decision. But, we decided to still exchange cards.

Yesterday I went to the store to grab a nice Christmas card for her. I instinctively grabbed 2, because for every Christmas of my life before my sister’s death I’ve always had 2 people to shop for. My mom and my sister.

Last year, Christmas was a blur. Blurry quite literally from cried out eyes. This Sunday, December 17, will mark 1 year since her death, which is hard to believe.

So last year, Christmas was… nothing. Christmas movies played on the TV as background noise while we made death arrangements, but if you put a gun to my head, I’d swear Christmas didn’t happen last year. I’m not even sure if Jesus was born.

After almost a year of days, this Christmas feels like it might happen, but of course with a pall over it, because the pall of death can feel as eternal as the life we might find on the other side of it.

But as they say, time does offer some healing, though small. So this year, we’ve felt able to even imagine a Christmas. A Christmas of being together and cards.

I instinctively got 2 cards, and as quickly as I’d grabbed them, I remembered I only needed 1. Grief approaches sly, but attacks with pangs and fits. I stepped outside of myself, to watch me cry in Target.

I bought both cards. Weeping back at the car, I decided to still give her one.

Being a priest and spiritual director is such a gift, but I often feel like I’m the least qualified person to be one. I have myriad people I care for who bring their own grief to me, so I can help them honor it, process it, and try to let God and time do their work of healing. But for the past year especially, I have felt an awful lot like the worst person to help anyone figure out their grief, because I feel so lost in figuring out my own.

But yesterday, weeping back at the car, I decided writing her a card was part of it. Part of the grieving, the honoring, the processing. Like maybe a card would help both me and her know we still love each other, even across the distance of death.

Today, maybe you don’t hold any grief at all. If that’s the case, I am genuinely so happy for you. And if you are grieving, I’m with you, in the most real way I can be.

Maybe this year, we write cards to the dead, to remember them, to remind ourselves they are still a gift to us, and we still want them at our most high and holy feasts.

It feels both odd and liberating to write my last post for 2023. I am very ready to say goodbye to 2023. It has been the hardest year of my life since sobriety. Sobriety offered me such immense joy — and it still does — but something shifts when your joy has to make space for grief, which feels so opposite to it.

But if years of spiritual study have taught me anything, they have taught me this — the Advent I await in Jesus is an Advent that speaks to hope amidst deep pain. The Magnificat is a battle cry, not a lullaby. I am hoping against hope for the inbreaking of the love of God into my own life, knowing it has maybe the only words of joy to speak to my deep pain.

May you receive words of joy that give you hope amidst your own deep pains.

Love y’all,
EJW

PS: I’ll return again in January! Thank you for your patience with me, and my writing schedule, this year. I’m so grateful for you!

SOJOURNERS’ BEST BOOKS OF 2023

I’m floored to see my book — Sober Spirituality — on Sojourners list of Best Books of 2023! Profoundly grateful to have my labor of love honored in this way. Thank you to everyone who has supported me & my book this year!

A huge gift you could give me for Christmas is a review of Sober Spirituality on Amazon if you have read it! And you don’t have to buy it from Amazon to leave a review. Thank you in advance! <3

coach with me for Dry January

Want a coach to support you through Dry January? I’d love to work with you!

We’ll meet once a week throughout the month to talk through triggers, what’s motivational and demotivational, set goals, and reflect. We’ll get you prepared for events, too!