2022 was one of the hardest years of my life.
Choosing to end my marriage and move towards divorce was an excruciating decision. The pain that followed was deep and vast. There were days I laid on my office floor and cried. Days where the pain & grief felt almost too much to bear.
But I have intense gratefulness for 2022, because it was also one of profound personal growth. I fully listened to my Voice and to my Body, and She’s leading the way now.
Together, Her and I landed on my word for 2023: LIBERATION.
I don’t exactly know how to explain or express it, but my Voice, my Knowing – they are feeling more liberated each day. Not that there isn’t still pain and grief – but liberation is there, growing up through the cracks.
At first, even thinking of taking a step was paralyzing. But then I did… I took a step. And then another, and another. I’m so proud of each step I have taken so far. In 2023, I believe we’re going to learn to run.
I’m excited to see where my Knowing and I will go. What we will experience. In what new ways will we grow & grieve & feel.
Are there ways you can liberate yourself from anything in your own life, big or small? I encourage you to sit with that.
Have you thought of a word that might encapsulate and motivate you through 2023? I’d love to hear yours!
I’m believing for beautiful, bold & joyful things to come in 2023 – for you and for me. Sending love to you, my friends.
STACEY CHOMIAK 
We run in the same circles as you are a well known voice within the LGBTQIA2S+ groups in the Fraser Valley and Vancouver. I have followed you for many years now as I took interest in you and your life. As a black member of the LGBTQIA2S+ family I was taken aback from this blog post. I have talked extensively with other black friends, mentors and loved ones to get their inspired wisdom on it. To be going through such heartbreak as you separate yourself from your family, to post and use the word liberation as your word felt like a slap in the face to me as a black lesbian woman and to our community.
Being a black woman within any community, even this one has been a challenge my whole life. Being a black woman from a large black family has never been easy for anyone in my family. Racism is real, it’s a daily slavery that I deal with and will deal with for the rest of my life. We fight against a colonial power and Federal government that still to this day won’t allow us to be fully free exactly as we are.
Liberated, what are you liberated from? Slavery? Were you held in a life against your will? Because my precious God life has looked pretty good for you these last many years thanks to social media.
Grief is a long suffering, quiet journey and you have turned it into a social media soap box.
Ignorance or not I wouldn’t be proud saying all of this. The local LGBTQIA2S+ community is watching you and you are a topic of conversation as we watch you “walk” but mostly “talk” through your grief. You are a leader, a leader and have many influential young people watching you and how you’re navigating this “heartbreak”. A lot of young people of colour are watching you.
From a black lesbian woman I would encourage you to reach out to some black friends. Have conversations with the local Indigenous communities or the Asian communities who have suffered tremendously especially through covid. Ask them what liberation means to them. Liberation is a word we wish we could talk about in relation to our skin colour, our families and our culture and we would never use it to promote our freedom from something so beautiful.
Praying you take time to be quiet, to learn, to listen, to embrace grief for what it is and not use it to boost your standings on facebook or insta. You are losing your family, that is not liberation or something to be proud of.
You are tremendously gifted sister and that comes with heavy social responsibility.
Blessings to you.
Nat
My Sister Nat,
Thank you for taking the time to speak to me on this. I take these kinds of thoughts deeply seriously, so I will take some time to reach out to my POC friends before I properly respond.
Blessings back to you,
Stace