Yep, the year is over, thank God. This has been a challenging year from the beginning.

I started 2024 with intermittent illness that last about 3 months. The flu, a stye that lasts months, vision issues, you name it. It all derailed me from the phenomenal progress on the Peloton and with E2M. My workouts and the motivation of the group that had been clearing my mind and healing my life were greatly reduced, and I spent the rest of the year trying to regain the drive and focus from 2023. Sadly, I was unable to fully recover the momentum.

When what is healing you is absent, your wellness suffers, and mine did. My wellness and self care are what allow me to succeed and grow in other areas for my life, and I’m only realizing this month just how much I’ve struggled this year. I am on a constantly moving wheel, feeling like I’m not moving quickly enough or far enough or purposely enough. I am tired.

I am truly exhausted. I have stood in the gap for so many people for too long, and I have never received the same level of support that I have given. I have supported families, churches, children, coworkers, organizations and causes all in need of my experience, my empathy, my energy, my finances, and my time, and I am fecking tired. I am so tired of being the one expected to be satisfied with doing and giving, and not receiving appreciation or validation in kind. I am the listening ear who cannot be heard. I am the empath that cannot be understood. My hands are out offering what is not offered to me, and I am depleted. I have given too much of myself.

The second half of the year moved quickly, and despite my best efforts, I could not catch up. My spirit was lifted when Kamala was able to step forward and provide a burst of hope. It was difficult to hear the hurtful rhetoric spewed about her, and it was impossible not to feel a similar disrespect spewed towards all of us who look and function like her. My heart broke at the hateful ignorance that demonstrated again the accepted disrespect and disdain for intelligent and accomplished Black women, and I have not healed from that. It is a constant that other women of color and non-melanated women cannot will not do not understand or appreciate, and I am tired of trying to explain it.

2024 was hard and hurtful. I am no longer in the position to tolerate what does not edify and support me. I no longer have to give what I once had available. My focus is on my health — mental, emotional, physical, and most importantly spiritual health. And like most years, I look forward to the changes that will allow my growth.

God help us all.