As we enter into this fresh new year, I cannot help but be in a deeply reflective state as I find myself pondering what the year 2022 brought into my life — the good along with the bad. It is a tradition I adopted years ago, but recently, I have begun to attempt to pick out the positive moments from each year and clutch them close to my soul for safekeeping.

Another little-known fact about me that I have not shared with you thus far is that I believe that everything happens for a reason. And for someone who is as obsessed with books as I am, I have begun to equate each year of my life to a “chapter” in my story, which translates into me trying to comprehend the blessings of the past year before allowing myself to be fully present in the new one.

And instead of internalizing it all, I have decided to write about it and take you all along on my mental journey as I reminisce. Because I think we all can acknowledge that these past few years have contained their fair share of dark moments, but I think we can also all acknowledge that there has been a lot of sunlight that has managed to seep through them.

As you all are aware, this year has been one of many changes and moments of clarity as well as self-discovery for me. I continued the pursuit of my academic career by enrolling in grad school, which was a milestone for me. Because as I’ve discussed in a previous column, upon graduating with my undergraduate degree in the spring of 2021, I went through a period of emotional upheaval during which I had no clue what I was going to do with my life. But performing well in school has always been my safe haven, and returning back to school has granted me this new vigor for my career path. Through my classes, I am discovering new passions and avenues within the publishing industry that I didn’t even know existed. For instance, my enjoyment of the various nitty-gritty details pertaining to contracts in the publishing sphere; along with the discovery during the internship I currently have, under a literary agent, that I could very easily see myself pursuing that as a career path. This, alone, has been a glorious realization due to the mere fact that I can apply to wider job prospects.

And through the past year, I have been struck by the fact that the littlest things in life can have the most profound impacts; for example, receiving validation that one possesses the skill to pursue their chosen career path, or experiencing something new with loved ones by your side.

To avoid keeping you in suspense any longer, one of my favorite moments of this past year was also the most mundane — going for a stroll on the beach for the first time. This may seem like an insignificant experience for those who are able-bodied, but for those in the physically disabled population it is a rarity that is worth its weight in gold.

Especially in the case of someone like me who has had a complicated relationship with the beach for many years.

My family has been vacationing on beaches across New England for as long as I can remember. And when I was little, I was perfectly content to sit in one place and play in my adapted beach chair, but when I hit my early adolescence, I began to resent the fact that my cousins could so easily frolic in the sand and ocean when I could not. And as the years have gone by, that feeling has not dissipated. Instead, it has morphed into a metaphorical bitter pill that I have had to swallow during each of our yearly family vacations — to the point where I began to slightly despise the beach.

However, that is something that changed, for the better, this past October when I actually got to partake in such basic beach activity.

In the summer of 2021 through this past summer, I had a freelance writing job where I would write bi-monthly blog posts and grants for a non-profit organization called SMILE Mass that works to make creative and physical opportunities available to children and young adults of all abilities. And as payment for my work, I was given the opportunity to stay at the organization’s completely handicapped-accessible beachfront condo for a week. There was a chair that I could be pushed in on the sand, which finally allowed me to have the pivotal experience of strolling on the beach.

I’m not going to lie. It took a fair amount of convincing from my mom to try it out, but I’m incredibly happy that I did. Even though my leg fell asleep halfway through the walk, it was a glorious anecdote in my 2022 chapter when I was able to experience the beach from a new perspective — and gain a new appreciation for it.

I hope that you all will take this opportunity now to reflect on the small miracles in each of your 2022 chapters, and I want to wish you many more in 2023!

Columnist Joanna Buoniconti is a freelance writer and an editorial intern at INCLUDAS Publishing.]]>