Season 4, Episode 13 - New Year Thoughts with Danielle S Castillejo

Danielle

Good morning. Welcome to the ARise podcast, conversations on faith, race, justice, agenda and healing. My name is Danielle Castillejo, and I'm coming to you solo today. Uh, it's the year 2023 and I don't know how many of you have actually looked at the date and been like, what happened to the time? I know. As 2023 started and the last year since 2020 arrived, I, I had some trepidation and I still have that trepidation. So stepping into the new year and there are gonna be some guests coming up and some podcasts coming up. But living in the reality of post pandemic life meant that over Christmas break this year, uh, my kids out at Christmas break, there was a lot of sickness that went through our home. We still haven't tested positive for Covid. Um, we didn't test positive for flu, but we were diagnosed with a cough.

And that cough actually took out my entire voice for over a week. So I'm just aware that I think during the pandemic, there was this sense, like in the thick of it, in 2020, in 2021, that we were in this state of the world where sickness was alive. It was active and literally physical sickness that would threaten our health. And then the racial disparities and the racial uprising that these were things that were able to come to light. And I think there was a sense of, and I remember talking about it with Maggie and talking about it with other friends, like, actually, we're not in post-trauma right now. This is an ongoing thing that's happening. So, I think one of the things I wondered stepping into 2023 was whether or not I would feel that we were post pandemic and it was interesting to become or get kind of a big illness at the end of 2022.

I remember thinking, I wonder what Covid feels like and having some panic around, is my my throat sore because I never had that experience? Or is this cough? Can I breathe? Just the panic around that was still very present and I haven't experienced covid 19, I wasn't infected by it. Um, so I, I think that that was just an interesting response to me. And as 2023 started, I had this feeling that I was just going to move into the year slow. That's what I told myself. And there's no criticism or judgment. A lot of people make words for the year or gain some kind of resolution or goals or setting standards. And I do actually periodically evaluate where I'm at and what I'm doing and things I'm working toward, towards and moving towards.

And I just have never been able to write a word down or set up New Year's resolutions. I always feel that if I do that, it will fall shorter. I will fail. So it's kind of a little internal battle with myself, but I, I do think I'm walking into 2023 with a sense of deliberateness and maybe a little bit of fear and a like very keenly aware that there are so many things about a new year that I don't know. I think in the past, like when I was in grad school, pre-grad school, there were just things that seemed for sure, it seemed for sure that the kids would go back to school. It seemed for sure that I would be able to show up to my classes. It seemed for sure that we would have work, and all of those things are in flux.

Not that they're shutting down schools anymore, but will we be well enough to do this? Will we feel well enough? Will we feel safe? And I, I do wonder if we're in this transition phase from pandemic to post pandemic, and I still don't know if we're out of some of those mentalities last weekend and had the great honor and privilege of going to the Seattle School and listening to a dear friend, um, Phil Allen Jr. Talk about his book Open Wounds and the Prophetic Lens. He was a keynote speaker and there were so many people I haven't seen in a long time, or maybe I've just seen over Zoom. And so I found myself, you know, people walking up to me wanting to be social, starting a conversation, and we're engaging over just a certain topic. And as they're talking to me, someone else walks up and says Hi.

(04:45):

And I didn't know the social cues. I didn't know how to relate to the person that was, I was in deep conversation with. And that was in an instant. Hmm. And I didn't know how to switch gears and pay attention to the next person. I'm so outta practice. I mean, I've been getting together with friends and obviously talking with my family, but in a situation where there's many people that I would like to connect with or don't realize that I would like to connect with, I was just like, socially, I felt socially inept. I did not know what I was doing. I was jumping from conversation to conversation. I was a little bit mortified that I was allowing myself to be interrupted when I was having a good conversation with one person. And so I'm just aware that like, I don't know what to do in that situation. I don't have practice at it. I have to reengage somehow. Um, I'm outta practice. So there's just so many layers to coming out of a period of isolation. Maybe you weren't someone that went into isolation. Maybe you, you were able to have like a pod or people that you related with. But

I think there's something that still feels in the air to me that feels siloed, that maybe when I walk to the grocery store and I've seen it with other people, like people that know each other, that I know, know each other, and they don't say hi. I'm like, what is going on there? What is happening for us in our individual spaces and the places that we have maintained connection? How have we been able to do that? Is it by miracle? Is it through intentional effort? Um, I don't know. I, I don't know the answer. Been thinking a lot about how the younger parts of ourselves have been both likely activated by those periods of isolation. And how, what do we do with that now? I think, I mean, I think, I mean, just even in those conversations in that group, just feeling very young and very excited and very happy to be with everybody and literally not knowing what to do.

And do