tops of 2025
Years ago, when I was deep in the grief and angst of cancer and infertility, a lay counselor at church shared a Buddhist saying about everyone having ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows in their lives. It didn't do much for me at the time, but I think about it a lot now. Stories have arcs and meaning. Real life is more scattershot. I got through the sorrows of my 2010s and went on to have more joys and more sorrows...and 2025 was a bit heavy on the latter, to be honest. I am so superstitious that I don't want to say "it was a bad year" because It Could Have Been So Much Worse, because it still could be [insert evil eye emoji], but a year that kicks off with your city catching fire isn't the easiest thing to bounce back from. ("But Cheryl," says my inner Cheryl, "YOUR neighborhood didn't burn.") Then Joey landed in the hospital for a week ("Only a week! He was fine! Antibiotics did the trick!"), which tipped my hyper-vigil...