2021 in Review
In the early days of 2021, I shared my hopes for the year:
I hoped the vaccine rollout would accelerate. I hoped that economic relief would be provided for those in financial distress. I hoped that justice would prevail.
I hoped that God would use me in the coming year, that I would be a vessel for divine love and grace.
I hoped to continue to engage with my community and my world, listening to their thoughts and hopes.
Looking back a year later, some hopes became reality in beautiful ways, and the others…I still hope for those that remain unseen. In the following post, I share an overview of the year, personal and professional milestones, unexpected losses of loved ones, pain and grief complicated by the overarching layer of an unpredictable, ever-changing pandemic. I am keenly aware of the extent of loss this past year across the globe and thankful for the helpers and healers, seekers of justice and reconciliation. They give me hope for the year ahead.
Would you share your thoughts, experiences, and reflections on 2021 with me?
January 2021
On the afternoon of January 6th, 2021, my husband and I left the Virginia Eye Institute Surgery Center and headed home. Dan turned on the radio, and we began to hear reports of what was happening at the Capitol. He turned up the volume, and instinctively, I reached for my phone to check for more information and messages from our girls. But my left eye was covered with a bandage that could not be removed until a follow-up appointment the next day and my right eye was of no use to me. I could not read or type or double tap.
How had we gotten here? How had I?
Eight surgeries over four and a half years, following a retinal detachment in June of 2016, were successful in saving the eye itself, but they failed to restore the vision in my right eye. It took me a while to understand the outcome, to realize how fortunate I was, and to comprehend the loss. Meanwhile, over the course of 2020, I developed a cataract on my “good” eye, my left eye. Slowly over time my vision was obscured such that I could no longer see to drive.
The obstruction in my vision became a metaphor for 2020, the pandemic response and national reckoning for racial injustice, as I remembered Jesus’s words from Matthew 7:5, “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye” (NRSV).
I will never forget that day of chaos, January 6th, the day of my “good eye” surgery, a day which holds ramifications for our country, still.
February -- A Vessel for Love and Grace
In February, I began working with Centenary United Methodist Church on Expanding Our Welcome, a four-part series about creating safe spaces for transgender and non-binary folks. It was a hope realized as our team shared a message of understanding, education, connection, compassion, and belonging. I’m in the process of piloting this program to other churches. If you’d like to be a guest speaker or host a series at your faith community, please contact me.
On February 15, my article “When a Caregiver Is No Longer Needed: Grieving And Growing Into A Second Career” was published in Boomer Magazine.
March -- Vaccine Rollouts, Community, and Hope for Equality
In March, many of my hopes turned into plans, steps toward being the change I wanted to see in 2021.
On Monday, March 1, I got my first vaccine. One of my daughters drove me to South Carolina, where there were multitudinous appointments available because of vaccine hesitancy. We both received our shots that day.
On March 9, I appeared on Just Talk Live, a weekly talk show created by Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice. Unbound is an online journal and community affiliated with the PC (USA) that examines, expresses, and encourages commitments to social justice as inspired by the prophetic gospel of Jesus Christ. You can listen to our discussion here.
March 12-14, I attended the Chair in Transgender Studies Conference out of Victoria, Canada. Watch four days in 11 minutes.
On March 20, less than three weeks after my first vaccine, I observed the somber first anniversary of my Pandemic Diary. I reflected on the season when the world shifted, and the hope I continued to find in the world around me, from vaccines to the promise of spring blooms and the cries of chickadees.
On March 28, days prior to Transgender Day of Visibility, I published a column in the Richmond Times Dispatch in support of the Equality Act.
April -- Poetry, Giving Power and Potential
On April 23, I did my first poetry reading thanks to River City Poets and their poetry night at Cafe Zata.
The poem I read, entitled “Sun Day Blessing,” was my first to be published, appearing in the Summer 2021 edition of the Journal of the Virginia Writers Club.
The poem came out of the writing I did in 2019, which included much poetry that will not appear in the final manuscript of my book, Martine: A Memoir, Her Disappearance, Mysterious Death and What I Learned About My Transgender Sister that Changed The Trajectory Of My Life. The poem speaks to the loss of my father, the emotional dynamics of our family, my vocation as a pastor, and the power and potential of the blessing we can give to one another.
May -- A Month of Mourning
In May, we lost a young adult in our extended family due to a stroke. Oliver had become a dear friend, reading an early draft of my manuscript with enthusiasm and sending numerous text messages with his thoughts. I had been privileged to perform the service of marriage for Oliver and his wife in 2019, which was a great joy. Oliver had come out as transgender, recently undergone top surgery, and received support and care from friends and many members of his extended family. “He loved and supported your work,” his wife told me when I asked for permission to write about Oliver. “He usually told other people he was trans pretty early on when he met them. It was part of his story and it was important to him. He wanted to be visible to others.”
“That is a gift for so many,” I said.
“He was a pretty wonderful guy.”
Oliver “Oli” Desmond Pollard
June -- Memorials
In June we held a celebration remembering the life of Dan’s aunt Lizzie at a winery in Charlottesville. Losing loved ones during the pandemic has not been easy. Everything has changed, there are new layers of complication to our grief. In 2020, I reflected, as a pastor, on the mourning during isolation that we were all experiencing. A year later, our family gathered outdoors for Aunt Lizzie’s memorial, grateful to be together to remember her even as cases began to rise again, living out how our norms around death and grief were changing.
July -- Loss, Memorials, Community, and Causes for Celebration
In July, my husband and I lost our brother-in-law to cancer related to exposure to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. I presided at a service of remembrance for him which was held outdoors by the James River. A bugler played “Taps” and “The Marines’ Hymn,” a service provided for every veteran by a volunteer association of musicians. We were all in tears.
I learned about the Book Development Program at Queens University in Charlotte, applied, and was accepted.
My first article series was published in Boomer Magazine:
I attended the Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference, an international conference held online for the first time.
I continued to have new insights to be included in my manuscript, including one particular moment in July, in the midst of a summer rain shower.
My brother, Bob, and sister-in-law, Linda, moved from Alabama to Richmond, along with their two fluffy puppies!
August -- A Hope Realized, A Hope Unfulfilled
Our daughter, Anna, and her husband, Christian, celebrated their first anniversary with the renewal of vows, following the 10-person ceremony of 2020. The pandemic continued, and, due to the Delta variant, which had impacted our family, we had a smaller celebration than we had anticipated.
The pandemic did not ease with the offering of vaccines and even boosters, as had been hoped, but rather morphed and changed and continues to alter our world in ways we can see in real time and in ways we will only look back on and identify with the passing of time.
September -- Reunions
In September it was a joy to return to Three Chopt Presbyterian Church on a Sunday morning to give an update to a church school class on my ministry three years after I departed a ministry of eleven years as pastor.
October -- Loss and Love Makes Room
In October, we lost my sister-in-law, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, leaving a newborn granddaughter she never had the chance to meet.
I had the opportunity to publish another book review in the Presbyterian Outlook. “When her 16-year-old daughter came out,” I wrote in the review, “Christian music artist Staci Frenes found her faith faltering. For Frenes, being gay was unacceptable within a ‘Jesus-loving, church-going, Bible-believing family.’ Wasn’t it? In Love Makes Room, she reexamines all she had been taught in evangelical circles about the LGBTQ community, and reaches the conclusion that her daughter’s sexual orientation is neither a choice nor a sin.”
“Anyone in a non-affirming Christian community or who is struggling to accept an LGBTQ family member could benefit from Love Makes Room with its safe space for parents and others to reconcile what they have been taught with what they instinctively know to be true.”
November -- Remembrance, Gratitude, and Reunions
For the second year in a row, I wrote a column on Transgender Day of Remembrance for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. I explained how Virginia had arrived at the current divisive point regarding the model policies for supporting transgender students because interest groups had stoked fear by spreading misinformation in order to elect candidates on November 2, and I provided a way forward.
At Thanksgiving, we were able to see all of our girls and their partners, some of whom we had not seen for more than a year. It was a great joy!
November also brought the unexpected opportunity to take an impromptu girls’ trip with my childhood best friend, Diane, my daughter Amy and her roommate.
December -- A Light Shines in the Darkness
We held smaller Christmas celebrations in light of the virus variant as well as serious non-COVID hospitalizations and diagnoses among close family members. The extended Walker family gathered in our home, a smaller-than-past-years celebration that provided a more intimate setting for everyone to talk at length with one another.
On Christmas Day, nine of us gathered, enjoying breakfast, then pouring out the contents of stockings and examining secret Santa gifts for a clue as to the sender.
2022
And here we are, a year later. As Covid cases rise, vaccine mandates and safety precautions are being lifted. Misinformation continues to spread as we approach the loss of a million people in our country alone.
In the first week of 2021, I found myself vulnerable, unable to see for myself what was happening in our country as I came out of surgery to repair the one eye I depended upon to read and drive and see the faces of those I love. It was unsettling to be vulnerable in the midst of chaos, to depend on others, to be unable to read or use my phone. Reading is my lifeline, my lifelong passion. I was bereft. Five people died because of the events, shortly before, during or following.
One year later, our understanding of what happened on that January day is not uniformly defined. An attack, a storming, a breaching of the Capitol? An insurrection? A riot? The workings of a mob? I note the power of language, the meaning of a word, as more than a year later, the description of what happened varies and is politically charged.
I carry with me a sense of vulnerability and dependence, aware that life can take unexpected twists and turns. Our lives, our nation and our world are ever-changing. What never changes is the power of love and the ability we have, regardless of what is happening around us, to choose how we respond, and to choose compassion, the way of love.