2022: The Year That Was.

We all have years we wished hadn’t happened.

• For many it would have been 2020.

For me it would have been two years later.

They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Perhaps.

Maybe for many.

But, for me at the time,  it just felt endless, torturous and unbearable.

2022 was the year that chewed us up and spat us out.

There was change and upheaval all around.

Not the good kind we in human form would claim- after all, who welcomes that kind of change?!

Only the Almighty knows the beauty that was cushioned in between all that pain, uncertainty and so much fear.

But then again uncertainty always has fear as it’s companion.

Eid wasn’t Eid for us that year, just a lot of tears shed in two cities, continents apart, at the bedside of loved ones tested by trauma.

Trauma of being rendered, for the lack of a better term- absolutely helpless by dis-ease.

There wasn’t much of any joy in any of the days actually.

And then there were those of us uprooted from a life they had always known, homes they had sought warmth and comfort from to start over in other lands because it was the only option open to them at the time.

There were births and transitions and disruptions and letting go and saying goodbye : it was as if, in 2022, every person in this Mombasa Mommy’s life had been thrown off a rollercoaster to land on a foreign place, shaken, disoriented and scared.

But, thankfully, mercifully,  by the end of that year much of the chaos had settled- or perhaps we had just gotten used to it.

Only Allah knows.

At the end of the year rifts between family  had been cautiously mended, the critically ill were out of danger, foreign lands were starting to feel familiar and forgiveness had been passed all around.

I still look at or look back at 2022 with much emotion. I heard somewhere that if you can talk about a situation without feeling then you have fully healed from it. Perhaps the fact that I am only just writing about it two years later is a tell tale sign.

So I suppose I haven’t healed from the happenings of 2022.

But I also look back at it with gratitude. I suppose I have come away from it a different person.

I know, for sure, that there are certain people and certain things I will never look at with the same eyes again.

Have I wished all along the way that there were other methods for building more resilience than to have to pass through so many tribulations?

Of course.

There is an actual prayer of the pious wishing for the same.

Am I a changed person, more grateful, taking nothing and noone for granted as a result of 2022?

Without a doubt.

Do I wish never to go through a year like that again?

Absolutely.

As I look through the pics of all the critical events and the pivotal moments of that heartbreaking year, I make a prayer to keep seeing the good that came from it and to give thanks for what could have been manifold times worse but wasn’t.

İf it happened then it was by Divine Design.

My only responsibility is to say alhamdulillah (All Praises Be to Allah).

And I can look back and say if I survived that then by Allah’s Will I can survive anything.

And perhaps you can look at whatever challenges you have faced or face and think the same.

                               Photo Courtesy of Pixabay