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MY YEAR IN REVIEW (Episode 114)


 MY YEAR IN REVIEW

 

This morning it is raining and the almost unchilled air carries strong hints of green.

 

Alt text says this week’s photo is a collage of a group of people. It is indeed a collage and it is made from the photos that accompanied each blog post this year. I do like to take a look back before I look forward and I thought this would be one way of doing it for 2025.

 

When I was little I loved an annual. To me it was a book of delightful snippets collected together to be enjoyed in a period of time that involved a break from routine. I can picture myself reading in my pyjamas, the seemingly bottomless sweet tin, and the advent calendar that left its glitter on our fingers with all its doors open telling me that it was indeed Christmas Day. This week’s photo is like the cover of my 2025 annual.

 

This blog has been my way of building a good relationship with Mondays, and the fact there have been 114 episodes since September 2023 tells me that I have definitely adopted this as a habit. Singing as the Darkness Lifts (this blog’s title) comes from my love of three things:  the sound of birds welcoming the dawn, the feeling of darkness lifting, the moments of joy that make my heart sing. And writing each entry is a grounding in the changing of seasons when I take time to sniff the air each Monday morning and note its scent. In some ways it is also a setting down before moving on with the new week. It is a simple place to reflect, and it is a place to find joy as the darkness lifts.

 

When I look at my year through the lens of this week’s photo it makes me smile as I get transported back to particular moments and particular themes. It has been a vortex of a year at times, the kind where my tyres (both metaphorical and literal) have not always stayed pumped up, so it feels good to see it as a whole and honour the sadness as well as recognise the joy... the fact that we chose the brightest flowers for my lovely Dad’s funeral... that 2025 was the year I changed my mum’s photo on my phone so that when I call her she is framed right there holding her 80th birthday cake and smiling. It’s been a year of reflecting on silence, and words, and within it I have memed my brother, climbed a mountain with my sister, shared time with good people, celebrated the ‘showtime’ of yarn shows, and am finally learning the art of slow editing.

 

The following poem was shared at the launch of this year’s Christmas & Winter Anthology from Black Bough Poetry. I enjoyed writing this poem, and I loved hearing the selection of poems read aloud in the zoom room, and the fact that it then became the perfect evening to have twiglets and vegan sausage rolls as a nod towards the festive season.

 

THIS IS THE DARKEST SEASON

 

The tilt of the earth’s axis

offers us to winter.

 

We cling on,

fingers numb.

 

Remember spring my love,

hold tight with me.

 

Look how the snowdrops

lift lime-green lined umbrellas

above the blank, cold soil.

 

Remember spring my love,

hold on.

 

Stay steady here,

as the tawny owl hands night’s darkness

to the blackbird.

 

Remember spring,

let me show you sunrise

clementine the sky.

 

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