The Girl Math of Gratitudes and Resolutions

Being thankful, being conscientious, and turning every new year into limitless opportunity.

I think my brain short-circuits sometimes.

I think it’s hard for me to comprehend exactly where I am, at this moment, and compare it with where I’ve come from.

In the final weeks of every year, we always turn to gratitudes and nostalgic remembrances of this year and many before it.

Sometimes the fretting overrides the gratitude. We fret over what we didn’t accomplish. The ten pounds we still have stubbornly hanging on our hips and belly. The savings account that has far less than we planned on.

Those anxieties can cloud over the astounding miracle of what life truly is.

We can smother our own gratitude if we’re not careful.

Reality vs. perception

I have anxiety. Diagnosed. Treated. Still a very pervasive, very real presence in my life.

I fret over my older teens’ comings and goings, their safety, and their decisions while they are some of the most respectful, good, hardworking young people I know.

I fret over our finances while we are objectively the most stable we’ve ever been, financially.

I fret over our health when we are all blessed with good, strong healthy bodies.

I still struggle with the “other shoe” syndrome so typical among adults who had childhood trauma. We expect things to fail, people to disappoint, and good situations to turn sour. We always expect the worst.

So when the worst doesn’t materialize, we feel… well, paralyzed. What if I make a wrong move and bring down the whole house of cards? And in looking so cautiously for any small crack, we miss the extraordinary scene right before us.

The reality of my life is this: that I have reached a position that statistically less than 25% of adoptees will ever reach.

I am in a healthy, stable marriage. I have not been afflicted with addiction struggles. I have never been arrested nor have a criminal record. I graduated high school, went to college, and am, and have always been aside from when I was home with a baby, gainfully employed. I have stable mental health.

These milestones make me one of the luckiest adoption and trauma survivors alive today — in the whole world.

As icing on the proverbial cake, my biological mother is currently living in my home, the needle in the haystack that, with the crucial help of a dear person in my life who wants to remain unnamed, I found after twenty years of searching.

I get to have coffee with her, sit and watch movies with her, and watch her love on my children as if she’d been there all along.

I have achieved the dream, basically — any adoptee’s dream. And I climbed absolute mountains to get here, so perhaps that’s why I always have one eye over my shoulder, always watching out for something that could disrupt my work and tear down what I’ve so carefully and painstakingly built.

Sometimes I have to stop myself, to end the train of thoughts running through my mind firmly and intentionally redirect them to more fruitful destinations.

This year has been an unbelievable year of growth and progress for me, as well as many members of my household.

Two of our children graduated high school! Coming out of a high school experience that was largely spent at home, masking, social distancing, and, many times, self-teaching, this is an achievement not to be downplayed. They overcame a lot, and they both graduated with honors!

All of our children have accomplishments from this year that are remarkable, and they have all displayed a growth and depth of maturity that makes me so proud.

My mother gets to watch her grandchildren grow up, a particular joy she missed with my brother and me. She doesn’t miss a minute. She’s there for every occasion, every celebration large or small, every milestone, every game, she’s there cheering them on and giving them all the unconditional love that I so clearly inherited from her.

My husband experiences the same joy with his father as he moved here from Long Island three years ago to be here and share life with us. Pop Pop is also at every game, every milestone, and every celebration, usually with absolute buckets of food — real Italian food he cooks the way his mother and her mother did, as it has been passed down from their family in Naples.

We are so richly blessed it’s hard to wrap my brain around it sometimes.

We are blessed because we choose to focus our time and the bulk of our energy inside our home, on our children and our family. We may never be ‘rich’ or famous in the world out there, but here, we’re millionaires living the dream.

As always, I make New Year’s resolutions. Some find it hokey and pointless, and many people point to the statistics of how many people give up before the end of the first month. I point to those who don’t.

I point to those who decide to quit smoking and they do, to quit drinking and they do, to write a book and they do, the ones who put their minds to something and they do it. Most years, I keep my resolutions; I think this is how I’ve built a successful life out of literal thin air. Every year, I set a new goal and I am pretty damn tenacious at chipping away at it until I achieve it, even if it doesn’t end up looking quite as I predicted.

I think it’s really neat that we get this perfect opportunity every year to shake off the failures and missteps of the past year, wipe the slate clean, and create a plan for moving forward.

If we aren’t moving forward, where are we going? Either stagnant or backward… neither are directions I’m interested in.

I do write quite a bit about my past, my childhood, but I want it to be understood that my daily life is very much lived in the present, and looking forward to the future. I always set lofty goals for myself, and then tweak and adjust them so they are realistically achievable.

Shoot for the moon and you’ll land among the stars, you know.

Always look to the light

This has been a tough year for most of us, in many ways. Economically, many people are struggling. I know many people who are struggling with grief, loneliness, and even a bit of despair. The Christmas light feels a bit dim this year.

There aren’t enough platitudes in the world to make it stop hurting, so I won’t bother.

What I will suggest is looking to the next year as a fresh opportunity to look to the light. Look forward, look up, and believe that you possess the skills and strength needed to accomplish whatever you set your mind to.

For every negative thing reported in the news, I see a dozen acts of kindness played out in real life. The man who jogs across the parking lot to help an elderly woman put her heavy groceries in her trunk and returns her cart for her.

The woman who stoops to pick up the money the man ahead of her dropped on the floor and taps his shoulder to return it instead of pocketing it.

The group of teenagers who pool their meager resources to buy underwear, socks, hygiene products, and food for their friend who has found himself unhoused.

These are the tiniest acts of humanity that are full of light and promise. For every negative act we see in the news, dozens of positive ones exist in the same space. I promise they do.

I’m making a conscious effort to seek the light that reminds me constantly that people are overwhelmingly good and want to be kind and helpful to one another, even if the media is desperate to convince us otherwise. I want you to, as well.

Fred Rogers said to look for the helpers. Someone earlier this year said to look for “glimmers” instead of triggers: those moments of positivity we experience that combat difficult situations and make our lives just a bit more pleasant. Both of these are examples of ways to be very intentional in seeking the good instead of the bad, and, to go a step further, to be an example of good.

If you don’t see the light, be the light. If you simply cannot find something to be grateful for, go do something to make someone else grateful. There. You’ve created gratitude, even if not exactly within yourself.

I know it’s a tall order, but I believe in you, as I believe in myself.

Personal and collective resolutions… can we do it?

Republicans, Democrats, and everything in between. The gays and the Christians, the immigrants and the top 1%, we all share the spark of humanity. We are being pitted against one another by multibillion-dollar enterprises designed to profit from our anger, distrust, and division.

This year, let’s find a way to tell them all, kindly, to go fuck themselves. We’re not playing along.

It’s an election year, one that holds the potential to either viciously divide America or to force us to unite in the shared goal of preserving the spark of humanity.

My New Year resolution is to do my part to be a force for unity and compassion, for peace before power. My goal is to unite communities in healing, collaboration, and enrichment. My project, A Light at the Other Side, is my vehicle for this, as is the Ben Franklin Circle I’m starting in our community to discuss several virtues and have holistically edifying discussions of how those virtues define our personal lives to open minds, create empathy, and enlighten individuals to the plights of their neighbors. The point is to hopefully foster a deeper comprehension of societal issues that may impact how we vote in the next, critically important, election.

It’s lofty, yes. I told you I tend to do that.

You can too. There’s literally no limit on how high you can dream.

When I count my gratitudes, it does sometimes resemble a mathematical equation. I’m grateful for our vehicle, and one that wasn’t financed, even if we did lose a car and I got hurt in the process. +1–2 = x. Solving for x, I’m still doing pretty damn good. I’m alive, we have a car, and, inexplicably, we’re now several thousand less in debt.

Look how that math worked out.

Go do your own mathing and you’ll probably realize that when it’s all said and done, you still have plenty to be thankful for and plenty of room to grow. The new year is the perfect time to restack the abacus and begin again.

Isn’t it lovely?

Look to the light, my friends. Be the light. This spark is sometimes all we have, so don’t you lose it. Remember what it is that makes you feel alive, and you go chase it with all your might and never let go.

If you’re looking for someone to believe in you, I do. Go for it, and don’t forget to tell me how it went.

I wanna see your glimmers, and I’ll keep sharing mine.

For every loved one whose light was extinguished this year, for everyone whose light is so dim they cannot see, let’s light it up. If my light needs to be extra bright to help yours out, I got you. If yours is super bright, spread it around.

The light is what will carry us through. Let’s make it a blaze that can’t be ignored, and we may just illuminate a path out of this darkness.

My name is Melissa Corrigan, and I’m a freelance writer/thought sharer/philosopher in coastal Virginia. I am a mom, a wife, a veteran, and so much more. I deeply enjoy sharing my thoughts and receiving feedback that sparks genuine, respectful conversation.

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