Farewell, 2016...(Part one)

Merry Christmas, friends.

And for that matter, Happy Halloween. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Hannukah, Boxing Day and Kwanzaa too. If any of you have celebrated a birthday between the last time I wrote and today, I hope it was the happiest as well. It's been a long time.

This has never been a place for me to cover up how I'm feeling. I'm not going to start now. The elections just knocked me to the ground. This isn't a political space, and it's not going to become one. But it is a human space, and in honor of just being a frightened human being, I have to tell you...it has been hard. As a mother, a wife, an artist...as a human being...it has been hard.

I found myself wondering what the point would be in writing? Or creating? Or having goals? What is the point of anything when the future has become, in my opinion, so perilous?

And then I remembered my favorite speech, given by William Faulkner as he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm in 1950. It was given after the end of WWII, at a time when people feared nuclear destruction and practiced hiding under desks in classrooms. Faulkner said:

"I decline to accept the end of man...I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."

(The full text of the speech, which is TOTALLY worth the read, can be found here.)

And it gave me hope. 

And I remembered that art, and writing, and pursuing dreams, and being creative...these are the things that elevate us. These are the things that make us human but more than that...they're what make us alive. 

And so 2016 was not perfect. No year is. But I'm leaving it feeling energized and hopeful, ready—with a stack of goals—to contribute as much beauty to this world as I possibly can. 

I hope you're well. I hope you're better than well and that you feel somehow elevated, inspired, creative, loved and hopeful as we go into 2017. I know I do.

xo...Danielle