Embrace the rhombus.

My one word for 2010 was "mend," which turned out to be quite premature, as January saw the pulling of a thread that unraveled my marriage along with so much of who I thought I was and what I thought I wanted to be.

My word for 2011 is "peace."

I think I've taken long strides towards making peace with all that has happened to me and the ways in which I chose to react to those experiences (sometimes with grace, sometimes with anger and spitefulness, sometimes with recklessness and immaturity). I am not without regrets. I have said and done things of which I am certainly not proud. I am kind of okay with that.

To me, having "peace" as my word this year means that I want to concentrate not only on keeping the peace with the father of my son, but with finding peace in my heart. Peace in terms of accepting what I cannot change and embracing the good that has arisen from the painful. No, I never imagined my family would take the shape that it has. I never in a million years thought I would become a single mom, or that I would then have a second marriage. I never envisioned my son having step-parents and a half sibling. That family structure is certainly not what I would have wished for him, never what I intended. As someone I love said recently regarding intentions, "It was supposed to be a square, but it turned out looking more like... a rhombus." ;)

My family may indeed be a rhombus, but you know what? There isn't anything wrong with rhombuses (rhombi?). My son will grow and thrive not in spite of the shape of our family, but because of it. He will grow up surrounded by love, and that is what is important. I am trying to see our divorce and remarriages not as a failure, but as a restructuring. The divorce was a loss, a loss that I will grieve in one way or another forever. I don't believe grief is something that ever disappears. People say time is what makes things better, but no amount of time can erase the past. And frankly, I wouldn't wish for its erasure. I think dealing with grief is more about deciding how you will carry loss, how you allow it to shape you and become a part of you. Out of this particular loss, we all stand to gain.

So here's to acceptance, to PEACE, and to 2011.