Self Advocacy
For New Year’s 2019, my family went down to Florida, and we have now tried to make it a yearly tradition. Obviously, we couldn’t go in 2020, and in 2021, we went down for my cousin’s wedding in October instead. In 2022, Dad hurt his back, so we couldn’t drive down. What I’m saying is that New Year's 2023 and ’24 are the first consecutive years we have been in Florida.
As I said in my second book, Once In A Lifetime: A Song For Sam, Dad’s best friend's daughter, Elizabeth, died on New Year’s Eve 2012. Before she died (and even after), Elizabeth helped me manage my grief after S.M. died. Every year, Elizabeth’s family has a memorial at her graveside on New Year’s Eve.
On Tuesday, December 31st, 2024, Mom, Dad, Ryan, Luke, Josh, Pop-pop, his partner Sara, and my Aunt Eva went to Elizabeth’s memorial. At the end of the memorial, I hugged Madison, Elizabeth’s older sister goodbye.
“We still still on for tomorrow?” She asked.
“Yes,” I replied, “but could you possibly pick me up? I don’t have a car down here.”
Now, before we continue, I need to tell you something about Madison and me. I used Madison as the surrogate main character in Once In A Lifetime, in the chapters about Elizabeth that I was not involved in. Because it was such an intense and private topic, I wanted to make sure Madison knew exactly what I would say about Elizabeth and why it was essential to the story. As a result, I had to be very vulnerable with Madison, and we have been very close ever since.
Madison picked me up at 1:30 on New Year’s Day 2025 at Eva, and Zach’s house and we drove to a nearby diner. While we were waiting for our table, Pop-pop and Sara walked in. After we greeted them, they asked if they could join our table, and we said yes.
Once we were seated, we talked about how Madison and her husband have been doing, the things Pop-pop and Sara have been doing, and then we started talking about how I’ve been. As I said in Part 1, I was not doing my best going into the new year. On the drive from Columbus to Orlando, I had a lot of time to think, and at this lunch, Madison, Pop-pop, and Sara helped me organize those thoughts:
We concluded that I didn’t learn the lesson from COVID that I needed to. From 2018-2023 I achieved more success than the previous year. From getting my dream job, publishing my books, starting this blog/podcast, public speaking, and in all of my relationships, I have been doing really well! I’m not saying that I didn’t have struggles during that time, but I always had my success to fall back on. The only year within that time period I regressed in my success level was 2020.
I didn’t take any responsibility for my lack of success during that year because all of it was out of my control. And while I have the self-awareness to forgive myself, I didn’t learn how to live without growing success. While I wasn’t unsuccessful in 2024, I was plateauing, and when I did run into stressful issues, I didn’t have as much success to lean on, causing me to spiral a lot. The name of this season was To Be An Advocate because I was planning on starting a nonprofit. That didn’t end up working out. But I learned a lesson from that failure: how can I advocate for others if I haven’t mastered advocating for myself?
Have a Greattastic day and be safe!
J. Mitchie Ulibarri
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