reflections from the old year, brought into the new

Melissa Firman
5 min readJan 1, 2021

because even in the deepest darkness there is always some light to be found.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Here’s wishing you and all you love a happy and healthy New Year. That sentiment certainly takes on a deeper meaning now that we’ve seen the merciful conclusion of a year unlike any other, does it not?

There was way too much heartbreak, devastation, suffering, injustice, grief and ruin in the past 12 months. For all of us. Our family has not been untouched by the darker side of 2020. And the great tragedy, for all of us, is so much of it could have been avoided. Not all, but a significant amount. Because so much of the suffering we collectively experienced in 2020 was deliberately inflicted from stupidity, denial, ignorance, inaction and malice by people such as The Loser of the Election and his sycophants.

New Year’s Eve was marked with the United States on the brink of 20 million confirmed coronavirus cases and nearly 345,000 reported deaths. Three belong to us: my father-in-law, my aunt, and my uncle (her husband). These are real numbers — not fake, not a hoax, not the fucking flu — that are sobering and hard to contemplate. And unrelated to COVID, there have been other equally difficult losses: a longtime friend from ALS, the continued deterioration of The Husband’s health from (quotes neurologist, rolls eyes) “symptoms that…

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Melissa Firman

Writes about books, GenX, politics, life. Currently working on a memoir. www.melissafirman.com