It’s December 27th. Which means a lot of conversations about the NEW year. What do I want? Who do I want to be? What are my goals?

I like self-reflecting and setting intentions. It’s clarifying, organizing and empowering.

AND, it can be a lot of pressure. To wrap up the past, leave old ways behind and write the future.

A fresh start is REALLY appealing. Like peace and satisfaction are on the other side of a comprehensive list, or a perfectly worded intention. And hey, sometimes, they is.

Personally, I visualize myself meditating on a mountainside like a little Buddha. Nothing bothers me because I’ve found the solution to all my problems. “This year, I’m going to be completely present and stop setting impossible expectations I can’t meet.”

. . . mmkay

How do I observe the new year as a marker of change, without the pressure to magically be perfect?

After asking a big, honking question I don’t have the answer to yet, I’ll start with, “What’s true?”

It’s winter. It’s cold and dark out. It’s ‘the holidays.’ We might be on break, traveling or outside our normal routine. Some of us are with people that stress us out. I’m going to take a big swing and say, some of us are tired. There’s a lot going on.

I’m struggling to generalize about who you are, what you’re experiencing, what I’m experiencing and offer answers.

I want to be able to tell you one thing. I want to give you whatever you’re here hoping to get. And yet, I’m just another human person on the other side of a screen riding the waves of whatever the hell this all is.

There is no ‘one way.’ No new year’s resolution to save us all. No permanent arrival. There are moments of clarity. There are moments of connection. There are moments when we recognize the absurd truth and just laugh.

That feels good.

To open up and let all the messiness, imperfection and incompleteness breathe.

There’s no one way. But there is a little freedom at the bottom of the truth.

More of that, please. More laughter. More truth. More closeness. Okay?

In fourth grade, we took our first overnight class trip to Colonial Williamsburg Virginia. When I look back on that year, it feels like the last sunlit spot of my childhood. 

I was still a candidate for popularity and I loved my teacher, Mr Carollan. He was fun and engaging and made it seem cool to care about school. 

And I cared about school. A LOT. It was my whole identity.

Everything was about getting an A and being the best. Because if I wasn’t, who was I? How would I earn love and attention?

I won the class spelling bee twice that year, which I’m still proud to report. But I came in second place to Aaron Chennault in memorizing the state capitals. A devastating blow.

I was sensitive and intensely perfectionistic.

I was also lonely and not well socialized, an only child to older, emotionally unavailable parents.

When I look back on that trip to Williamsburg, I see flashes of funny moments with the kids in my class and remember feeling excited to be in the mix. But I also remember something sad. Something I was ashamed and embarrassed by, and kept tucked away until a few months ago, when I told my partner Ike.

I remember it vividly. 1999. A hot day in Colonial Williamsburg. We were given a couple hours to wander freely. Alone, I stumbled into a highly sought after attraction. I went to the back of a long line of people waiting to have their photo taken in the old-timey stockade. (I did not know what a stockade was. I stuck my neck out, held up limp wrists on either side, and said, “the thing they put you in when you’re in jail.” “Stockade,” Ike said.)

That day in 1999, we could hardly wait to wriggle our body parts between those slabs of wood and pretend we’d been captured for our heinous crimes.

In the beating sun, I sweat and waited patiently for what seemed like an eternity, trading my precious free time for a turn to have this sensational experience. I inched forward, clutching my disposable camera, watching person after person wedge their arms and head in, smile for a photo, then bounce off contentedly.

I was finally next. I looked down at my disposable camera, and after all that waiting, realized there were no pictures left. And no one I knew was around to take it. I looked around, helpless and ashamed. I wondered if it was still worth wedging my arms and head in. That was the part I was excited about anyway. But I was too embarrassed. So I just walked away. 

That memory sat frozen in my mind for over 20 years, coated in the sinking loneliness I felt that day. A feeling I knew well.

If you’ve been following along, you know that we’re currently traveling the East coast. Last Saturday, Ike and I had some time to kill before we had to be in Maryland.

“…We could go to Colonial Williamsburg and get that photo of you in the stockade.” We erupted into laughter. 

To drive all the way to there to redo that moment from 1999 was absurd. But it also meant the world. To reach our arms back in time and hug that lonely 9 year old I’d given up on all those years ago. Laughing and crying, I agreed.

2023. A crisp day in Colonial Williamsburg. There was no line outside the courthouse, no swarm of sweaty kids waiting to be publicly arrested. Just me. A 33-year-old woman, standing exactly where I stood 24 years ago, looking at those same pieces of wood. Everything around me snapped into place. I was there, in the past and the present. Standing with my child self. Waiting. Not for one click of a disposable camera, but for 24 years to pass, so I could show her how worthy she was. Show her the person we’d become. 

When I got in the stockade, I told Ike to hold his phone up like he was taking a picture, but never tell me whether he took it or not. The mystery seemed more fun. Because it isn’t about a picture, or a spelling bee, or an A. It’s about going on absurd adventures, revealing your vulnerablest parts, and walking yourself through becoming cooler than you could have ever imagined in your wildest, 9-year-old dreams.

I had a dream the other night where some lines of a poem came through. One of the characters said them to me right before I woke up. This happens sometimes and it’s very exciting. It feels like someone or something is speaking to you through your own subconscious. 

I try to be available to receive inspiration as often as I can. I use meditation, visualization, writing and talking to people to keep myself clear and open. I believe we can all use these tools to plug into the Universe.

But sometimes, life piles up and my pipe gets clogged. I sit down to write and everything feels lame and overthought. Or I lay down to meditate and my brain keeps pulling me out.

I’m currently on the East coast where I grew up, visiting people and places from my past. This triggers ALLL these old versions of myself, and A LOT of interference. I’m trying to keep my channel clear and stay present, but I’m experiencing an avalanche of old thoughts and feelings threatening to bury me. It’s been really frustrating, and sad. 

Before this trip, I felt so strong. I had tasted the next version of myself coming down the pipeline. She felt SO GOOD. Clear, grounded, and easily in flow. Now, it feels like I’m falling back into old patterns and losing touch with the person I’m becoming.

In retrospect, these moments of regression always precede a big leap forward. I know it. I’ve seen it a million times, in myself and others. It’s almost as if they were the necessary pulling back of the slingshot before we launch forward. Still, it is hard to weather these feelings as they are happening. I keep meditating, I keep visualizing, I keep writing and talking, and it’s still hard.

Sometimes, that’s all you can do. To just allow it to be hard and stop trying to force yourself to feel different.

And so I tell myself, as if I’m that new version of myself from the future, “It’s okay. I love you. I’m coming.”