This month, I wanted to highlight the beauty of renewal.
With new ideas, plans, and actions being seen and put into action, it’s important to be aware of the changes underway. This allows you to choose how and where we grow, and it also helps us recognize burnout.
For most people, the new year started in January, at the end of the Gregorian calendar. Personally, during that time, I was “wintering”; not planting myself or preparing myself in any way, nor starting a new year, but allowing rest, recovery, and reflection. Slowing down for a whole season, to see what my year, the choices, actions, and thoughts of it looked like, and to see how I feel about it all.
When spring came, it reminded me that the day we plant the seed is not the day we bear the fruit, as well as reminding me that recovery, rest and rejuvenation are all essential parts of growth.
The Bridge for Youth not only honored but supported my reflection and its transition into actualized plans through the support of mental health services and inspired opportunities, especially while my community and neighborhood were under violent occupation, downright shattering my nervous system and progress.
The Bridge helped foster my becoming this winter to spring. This spring, I planted seeds of growth, seeds of action, advocacy and radical self-identity. I’m proud to have successfully continued my journey in a safe, sovereign, and empowered way, with support from the Bridge, this new year, this spring, where my growth was renewed and given new life, as spring does.
