Lipstick&Politics wishes you all an excellent New Year! We hope that you all find success and progress in your communities in 2017. With a future that seems especially uncertain, this is the best time to remember the values and causes important to you. From there, find the hope you need to look forward and cultivate a world that we can be proud of.

It’s become a commonly held idea that the year of 2016 was terrible. And in many ways, it was. One doesn’t have to look too hard to find the odd and difficult occurrences that took place during the last twelve months, ranging from obvious troubling political developments (Brexit and the US presidential election) to unsolved refugee and water crises to shootings, bombings, sexual assault cases taking center stage, not to mention the high number of deaths of high-profile figures who have affected millions around the world and left them devastated of their passing. It is an understatement to say that 2016 was a tough year.

But it was a year that we must never forget. It was a year that reminds us that our lives are fantastically finite yet influential of how the world works. We saw how one person can change the lives of many and how a great number of people can affect the life of one. If we are to reflect on the past year and make a judgement about what we should take away from it, it should be that 2016 was the teaching moment the we were dealt. It taught us that inequality affects every single one of us, that progress does not come easy, and that the struggles of and between humans, nature, and ideas will continue because it is simply inherent to our world.

You may look at the past year grimly and wish it never happened. But there was a lot of good that happened this past year as well, many of which were achieved through persistent work and good will. So it is imperative to take everything in stride. Time is moving forward and we must keep up the pace.