For my birthday we went bowling with friends which was super fun and played a bunch of overpriced arcade games. The healing process was also hugely challenging, but we’ve seen so many behavioural improvements since & I’m so grateful. The best birthday gift in 2022 was that Bruno got neutered after what had felt like an eternity. AprilĪpril is my birthday month, so it tends to bring a bit of joy & festivity into the cold winter months. It was hell! When I wasn’t dealing with that, I filmed a couple videos for Shopify, had my sisters over for brunch, miraculously sat out on a couple patios early in the season (!), and went back to the ballet (!!!) for the first time since Covid. Cue me trying to find private spaces for him to run around in off leash, in the city, in the winter, without a car. Bruno was officially a teenager, so he wasn’t supposed to go to dog parks until he got neutered. For the rest of the month, I turned inwards. But the retreat was a success, the food was delicious, and Bruno was a good boy throughout. I hosted my first retreat since Covid, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget carrying a tray of tests & tea out to attendees in their cars before we could safely gather. In my business, I tried to keep going, despite the overwhelm, burnout and grief that I felt personally. Russia invaded the Ukraine (what?!?!), disrupting the lives & wellbeing of so many people. I lost a close friend and client due to what was meant to be civil discourse about the goings-on at the time, a discussion that I lost several nights of sleep over. The ‘Freedom Convoy’ hit Ottawa, disrupting the lives & jobs of so many people. This is when things started to get really hard for me. And that was it really! Cold walks, making soup, too much snow. Bruno was also in the throes of adolescence, which led to several meltdowns on both our parts. I celebrated two years with Mike, and five years of friendship with Sonja! We had an epic snowstorm, and Bruno experienced jumping through literal FEET of snow for the first time. I cautiously kept planning my first in-person retreat since the pandemic had started, all while monitoring the lockdown & changing situation. We did an online version of Nurture Nurture, the personal growth retreat I do twice a year with friends. With that in mind, let’s get into my yearly recap, shall we? You can watch my One Second Everyday video here, or read on for the big picture of 2022. But the last few years have been absolute doozies, and there’s no denying it. I am getting support and I feel more capable of tackling the challenges ahead. Throw into the mix a puppy who needed neutering, a very busy boyfriend, a big move to a brand-new, unfamiliar city, and a slower business season than usual (recession, anyone?) and I ended the year feeling exhausted and pretty hopeless, to be honest.Īlready, 2023 feels lighter. The deep fatigue and brain fog lingered long after I had technically recovered. Later in the year, I was reckoning with the effects of the actual illness, which I got while traveling abroad. Almost every single member of my family physically moved, including us, and it was like a gigantic game of musical chairs – literally, since I moved into my grandmother’s house, and my sister moved into my apartment! Very destabilizing, to say the least.Įarly on in the year, I was reckoning with the effects of the pandemic, like continued lockdowns, uncertainty about plans, a surreal in-person retreat that almost didn’t happen, and a healthy dose of political unrest and anger coming from my fellow citizens. There was a ton of transition & disruption, and not a ton of energy with which to manage it all. Mazibuko, a permanent resident from Eswatini who is married to a South African, has taken the department to court over her blocked identity document as she’s been unable to travel, open a bank account or apply for citizenship.As I mentioned in my word of the year post, 2022 was a pretty hard year for me. For over a decade, Mazibuko has been fighting for the Department of Home Affairs to unblock her identity document, which was “marked”. When Phindile Mazibuko was informed by her bank in 2012 that her identity had been stolen, she had no idea that the incident would still be hanging over her head more than 10 years later. Thousands of other people are in the same situation. Phindile Mazibuko hasn’t been able to travel, open a bank account or apply for citizenship for more than 10 years after Home Affairs flagged her ID document. Lawyers for Human Rights in legal battle with Home Affairs over 10-year limbo identity document case Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara).
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