This has been quite the year. A year of unlearning and learning then relearning again. Of picking and unpicking the parts of our lives we want to keep and recognising what we actually don’t need.

A reckoning of breakdowns also shifted into breakthroughs (is it any surprise that during the lockdown, numbers seeking talking therapy went through the roof?) and we all at one point realised we needed a balance of good as well as bad news.

Much of 2020 was about letting go: of the roles we always play, of control, and of everything we’ve become accustomed to. 2020 became the year of understanding, instead of retelling the same narratives over and over again. And although life felt on pause, it still continued—we still lived and learned a lot. Here are the 10 things I’m taking from 2020 into 2021.

In British and Western cultures, we don’t know how to deal with grief. We don’t talk about it and we don’t really ask each other how they’re dealing with it, without washing over the pain. We don’t give time for an outpour of grief, even during a pandemic.

Those who have lost loved ones have been overlooked every day. That grief is not just grief when it’s pink and fresh and new, it still remains grief once its various shades of grey bring an inevitable ‘new normal’.

I learned that we still don’t know to talk about death even in our mortal lives spent trying to be the most recognised, the most famous, the most living person in the room, with the hopes that we’ll be remembered forever. That grief that we felt in 2020 also includes living losses, of where we thought we should be going, and that space needs to be held and grieved over too.

As Mary Oliver writes in Swan. We should rush to the good and be patient with the in-between as well as the bad. Joy is not to be reduced, it is not made to be a crumb! Pain is a part of life, as is illness, death, love, friendship, laughter, ease, change, joy and seasons, and we can’t have one without the other.

Getting through it, for the sake of getting through it, is enough. But no one wants to go their whole lives simply surviving. We have to live too.

Our relationship with beauty may have changed—perhaps, we’ve realised that the face we put on is tethered to make others feel comfortable, instead of doing it solely for ourselves, but beauty itself is ever powerful when everything else is going to shit.

When British soldiers liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, a large consignment of lipsticks eventually made its way to the camps. There’s a reason why huge numbers painted their lips happily, imagining one day of being free: beauty is uplifting, it’s a morale booster.

It can give a moment of hope, while on other days, it can be a part of a routine that gets you up in the morning. Beauty brings you into the present and during 2020, pushed us to look hard at ourselves and who we really enjoy being when it’s solely for ourselves. It should never be underestimated.

So when we’re procrastinating, thinking about all the things we ‘should’ be doing, or could be doing, it’s not real rest. Rest is switching off in order to switch on and resync. It’s a love letter to yourself and a prerequisite. In order to love others and the Earth, you have to adore yourself first, and that begins with old-fashioned rest.

Learning passed down recipes continues to soothe the soul as well as large cups of ginger tea. Try it if you haven’t already.

We rush to what we perceive as safety, building homes from the same things. Whether that’s clapping at the same time on a Thursday night, baking the same kind of bread or watching the same show. Simply, we need each other.

Even during a pandemic, black, brown and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately due to their race, alongside the working class, poor, elderly and disabled. We have a bigger class, race and abilities gap that we like to ignore every day. We can’t keep continuing like this and into 2021, just because we have been so far.

Anti-racist reading doesn’t equate to systemic change and a black man should never have to die in order for change to happen. No life will really matter until all Black Lives Matter. We should always give our roses to the people we love while we can and while they’re still here.

Technology, social media and crazes are the extra bits to life whereas the core should always be the people we love. As 2020 showed, the little things we have with one another are rarely just the little things.

A few weeks ago, while I was scrolling endlessly through YouTube, I ended up on a video titled Bethany and David Engagement Story posted by Girl Defined, a channel created by Bethany Baird and Kristen Clark. “Just two sisters striving to be God-defined girls in a culture-defined world,” states their about page. Also present on Instagram, the duo has more than 50,000 followers.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_xwJ7ojL82/

As I started looking at similar Christian accounts, I noticed that many of them had an impressive following and how different types of religious posts could be separated into categories. From Bible journaling to preaching to non-believers, Jesus lovers have become a new type of influencers on Instagram, YouTube and even TikTok. But what exactly characterises them, and is there anything wrong with influencers promoting a specific religion?

Although I am not religious myself, and should have probably steered clear of Netflix’s The Keepers, my aim is not to pull religions apart. Religious beliefs should always be respected. That being said, some religious people can occasionally go to extremes. Catholicism, more specifically, is not all good or bad, and that’s exactly the image Christian influencers seem to display on social media. Some of them want to share the word of God, while others think being religious gives them the right to dictate other people’s lives. It’s a fine line.

Let’s go back to the Bethany and David Engagement Story video I mentioned. In it, viewers can notice how uncomfortable David Beal seemed—almost unable to touch his wife for more than a few seconds. This pushed me to search for more information online on Baird and her husband. Apparently, before this video was posted, Baird had openly shared with her followers how she sent Beal to “conversion therapy” twice, which is an attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

After the couple allegedly opened up about Beal attending conversion therapy twice in a previous video, it was reportedly deleted. Since, both have chosen not to address the video regarding the therapy. On its website, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) has shared numbers collected by the UCLA Williams Institute which states that in the US, 698,000 LGBTQ adults aged 18 to 59 have undergone conversion therapy, and 57,000 aged 13 to 17 years old will receive conversion therapy from religious or spiritual advisors before they reach the age of 18.

This kind of therapy presents great risks and can sometimes lead to depression, anxiety and suicide. And, just like conversion therapy, religion can also reinforce self-hatred experienced by people who feel like they don’t belong in society. While this has sadly been proved in many cases, spirituality and religion can also impact someone’s well-being through social and emotional support. For example, I found many Christian influencers promoting healthy and uplifting messages on Instagram.

Christian blogger Meg Flower, mostly known as @Radiating_Jesus on Instagram, is one of the many US-based Christians using the social media platform as a way to share selfies, religious motivational quotes and over-edited pictures of her Bible journaling skills to her 16,700 followers. All in all, her account is pretty much harmless, apart from a few posts that shame ‘sinners’ or others that stipulate a good Christian can’t love God and the world they live in at the same time—apparently, Flower asks for absolute devotion from her followers.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_yNaWdljIE/

But although I could spend a while looking for small things to pick at, Flower’s account also preaches messages that everyone should get behind. Flower suffers from depression and anxiety and previously had an eating disorder. On @Radiating_Jesus, she openly discusses mental health and often offers her followers some advice on the topic. From medication and praying to speaking to friends and family, Flower has tried it all when it comes to dealing with mental health problems.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8r8nRalhe8/

Unlike Baird, Flower never expressed any homophobic views or mentioned conversion therapy, at least not online. And she’s not the only relatively digestible Christian account for people like myself, @SimpleBible and @TrueandLovelyCo are also part of a similar group of Instagram influencers.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_oQ9pflEp3/

Of course, generalisations shouldn’t and can’t be made about all Christian influencers. Many are only sharing positive messages and preaching their religion in inoffensive ways. But it is the few of them that go too far who not only risk negatively influencing young Instagram users and their mental health, but also distorting what religion is about in the first place.

Acceptance and bringing a sense of community to people who might need it should both be celebrated in religion as well as on social media platforms, and yet they seem to be the last things people preach and practice in life outside of social media.

Whether you believe in god, in something or even in nothing at all, maybe it’s time we all start worrying about the principles that we (knowingly or unknowingly) stand up for through our social media presence.