![a snowy scene of a meandering creek and barren trees on a Christmas card sitting closed on the envelope it was sent in](/uploads/2/2/4/1/22411386/published/img-20210105-142118766.jpg?1611898296)
In one of my personal challenges, I briefly encountered a man who did something to me that can be considered a felony depending on the state one lives in. Fortunately for me, the situation was a best-case scenario of the possible horrible outcomes that could have resulted. Given the other traumas I have faced, this one was a small one. However, it still had an impact on me that caused a wound which I had to work on healing.
Many months after this man traumatized me and with no further contact between us, he had the unabashed gall to send me a Christmas card which arrived on January 2, 2021 thanks to the post office delays over the holiday season. I was speechless when I opened it. It was a pretty card, and the message he wrote inside was generic but genuine. Still, him sending me a card was totally inappropriate given what had occurred. When I later shared the arrival of the Christmas card with others who knew the whole story, their universal response was, “He sent you what?!?”
![an empty coffee can on a concrete patio with a torn up card inside that is set on fire](/uploads/2/2/4/1/22411386/published/img-20210105-142412503.jpg?1611898648)
Someone on my Buy Nothing list had offered up some coffee cans which I claimed with the intent of burning the card. After photographing the card for this post, I tore it into pieces, said a prayer that its symbolic destruction would represent the departure of all the “bad” things that had happened in 2020 and would usher in a purified new year of 2021. And then I lit it on fire. (Please note the garden hose was immediately adjacent to the coffee can and I was burning it on a concrete patio many feet away from anything flammable.) As I watched it burn, I shifted my position with the wind to stay upwind of the smoke, continuing to pray for the healing of the damage that man caused me. A great deal of peace came over me during this ritual as I let go of some of the pain and moved toward the future.
After the fire burned itself out, I wet down the ashes and then threw the remainder in the trash which is what felt appropriate in this situation; sometimes scattering or burying the ashes in the better resolution. With the departure of those ashes, I said goodbye to 2020 with the hopes that 2021 will bring abundant blessings not just for me and my family, but for all.
©2021 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC