Reflecting on Love, Loss, and Unforeseen Milestones

I spent my Christmas in The Gambia, a holiday that my late fiancé, Cleve, and I had planned with my friend and her husband. We excited that they would get to visit Cleve’s spiritual home for the first time. As you can imagine, this trip turned out to be different from what we had planned and one that I knew would be hard. Other than planning a ceremony at the Royal Sankofa Estate (where we had planned to get married in November) to honour Cleve’s transition to his ancestors, it turned out that I unwittingly planned the ceremony for a year to the day of us first arriving at the Royal Sankofa on December 20th, 2023. The timing, the place, and the memories all intertwined in ways I hadn’t anticipated.  

Our holiday was a mixture of love, laughter, sorrow, and tears. The setting and the people I shared it with created a space where I could grieve in a way I hadn’t been able to before. It became a sacred time to honour not only the life Cleve that I had shared, but also the dreams we had for the future, dreams that will never come to be. In this place, I found a sense of peace, even amid the pain, and a way to reflect on both the past we cherished and the future we had hoped for.

Now that I’m back home, I’ve started to reflect on what 2025 might bring. While I can’t predict exactly what my personal journey will look like (who really can, right?), I’m feeling excited about the things I have planned for the months ahead…