NYE 2025

Leading up to this New Year’s Eve, like many years, I have found myself reflecting on the year behind and what I want for the year ahead. While I don’t typically set lofty resolutions, I do like to think about what my intentions are for the new year and what I want to leave behind. I think for 2026 my word is going to be ‘Alignment’; not just externally, but internally, with my body, my energy, and my capacity.

In many ways I have spent 2025 abandoning my needs, ignoring my body’s burnout cues, and overall falling into old habits of people-pleasing and minimizing myself. 2025 kicked off with me finding out that the company I had been working for less than a year was shutting down operations. I was fortunate to find a new job with a new organization in June, but it hasn’t been the easiest transition. I don’t always do well in spaces where roles are not clearly defined; however, I know my value and I know that I am excellent at building systems and processes - which is what I was hired for. One thing I’m leaving behind in 2025 is my need to prove myself to anyone other than myself. I’m leaving behind the need to continue to own things that are no longer mine. 

I also spent time in 2025 worrying about things beyond my control (especially politically), and while I don’t plan to bury my head in the sand any time soon, I know that I want to learn to inform without absorbing. I want to take action without feeling overwhelmed. I want to honor my desire to stay involved locally in our school district, while also understanding that there are certain things that are simply beyond my control. 

So what does that bring into 2026? As always, I want to focus on being present. But not just present in my day to day and present with my kids (which of course I always want), but being more present in my body. Listening to my body’s need for rest and allowing myself to actually rest without feeling guilty about the lack of productivity in that moment. Listening to when my brain starts to feel chaotic and realizing that I need to take mental breaks too. Part of that is spending less time on social media (especially before bedtime). The last few nights I’ve been coloring while listening to a book and sipping on magnesium hot chocolate instead of my doom scroll (or hope quest), and I think that it’s been really helpful. Another part of that is being honest with myself instead of shoving down my feelings. 

I see the next year as keeping what expands me, and letting go of what consumes my energy. I’m not saying I want to become less generous or volunteer less. But I am saying that my energy is precious and I should treat it as such. 

Happy New Year’s Eve dear reader... if you got this far, well, thank you for sticking with me and my abandoned blog.

Level Up

 

I was traveling this week, which while I love to travel, I was traveling alone and navigating my general anxiety around air travel and driving long car rides alone. It's been tricky, trying to fall back in love with car trips while having, at times, crippling anxiety around driving in general. I've come a long way with managing the anxiety while driving; however, it's still managing around the feeling of anxiety. The anxiety doesn't go away, it's just sort of there and I'm managing it like a rowdy toddler who won't stop screaming and you've managed to turn down the noise just a bit with some ear buds here and there. 

So, on the drive back (2 hours), I decided to leverage some of the visualization techniques I've been trying lately to work through the anxiety and intrusive thoughts. I asked myself what peace would feel like in my body. What would it feel like if I just let the anxiety go? Would it feel like relief? Would it feel like a loosening of the pressure I often feel in my chest lately. What would it feel like if I just didn't feel anxious? And while I can't say the anxiety went away completely, or didn't at least crop up during times I was driving over bridges or past semis that weren't staying in their lanes; overall, I felt good. And even when I got on the plane, I just didn't feel scared. I felt at peace and just happy to be where I was at.

Now granted, I also still utilized grounding, deep breathing, and even some prayer on my part. But overall, I was really pleased with this new way of approaching my anxiety. Not fighting against it, but letting myself feel it and then letting it go - or perhaps transmuting it into peace. 

I'm still working on allowing myself to ponder what certain emotions feel like in my body. I've been so disconnected to my body for so long because I was in chronic pain for so long I had to disassociate from my body in order to survive it. But now that I've identified the majority of my food triggers and my physical symptoms are generally manageable, I still tend to fall into that habit of being disconnected. so that's definitely a work in progress. 

What really started all of this was when I was meditating midday and asking myself what hope felt like in my body. Just a simple thing, or seemingly simple thing, recommended by a dear friend in one of my online communities. But it's changed everything. 

It feels like a leve up. Like this has become a huge shift. My goal right now is to stick with that feeling and continue to explore it.

The Price We Pay

I read somewhere and I often think that a common sentiment about grief is that "grief is the price we pay for love." And I used to believe that whole-heartedly... maybe up until just a few moments ago. But as I was meditating just now on what I need to let go of this month (mostly my need to control everything), I started thinking about my brother again. And it came to me that grief isn't the price we pay for love - grief IS love. 

Grief is the feeling in our body when we lose someone we love - yes - but it's also the way our love can transform when we feel that we have lost something we have loved. But the thing is, we never really lose that love, that love simply transforms. 

I have often over the last few years felt like I should be letting go of my grief over my brother; as if there was some magical moment in which I would no longer feel this intense loss. Moreover, I have felt an internal refusal to let go of that grief. A sense that if I let go of that grief that I am, in essence, letting go of my brother. That I am giving up, giving into that he died and that is the end of his story. But that isn't the end. He will always live on through my memories of him. He will always live on through the brotherly love he showed me. He will always live on because there is a part of me that believes his spirit is with me in some form (because it is).

And so what I've just realized is that my grief for him isn't want I need to let go of at all. What I need to let go of is the need to control how that grief is transforming - my love will never fade, and in a sense, neither will my grief. But that grief is transmuting into something else; a new form of love. That grief, over time, is slowly transforming into remembrance, into fondness, into the kind of love that endures through holding dearly everything my brother gave me to me throughout my life - put simply, love. The love of a brother, the love of an attempted mentor, a father figure (in some ways). The love of a deeply bonded sibling who got to know me over and over as I grew from a child, to a teenager, and into an adult.

I think for so long I've been so afraid to accept his passing because I was afraid that in that acceptance I would lose something. I hadn't identified what that something was. But I can't operate from a place of fear any longer - it's hurting me physically and mentally to keep doing this to myself. And my brother wouldn't have wanted that. And while I can't say I'm quite to that "acceptance" phase of grief yet, I can say that I slowly seeing in real time where that grief is transforming into something so beautiful - into the spirit of love and remembrance. Into the spirit of gratitude. Into the spirit of the collective.

So today, I am not letting go of my brother or the grief from his death. I am letting go of my need to control or hold on to the cycle of keeping my grief in the same place. The cycle of keeping myself in the same place. I am not letting my brother go, I am letting go of the fear and control that I have been clutching so tightly... because not only does it no longer serve me, but because I no longer need it. Only the the love remains, and that is more powerful than anything I could have ever imagined.

We're on a Road to Nowhere

 

I'm working hard at feeling my feelings today. I had a busy weekend throwing a birthday party for my now seven year old. But today I'm back to work at my day job - a job I found out last week will no longer exist in the next 4-12 months due to the company winding down it's operations. I know there will be other opportunities. But for the first time in my adult life, I found a place that I actually enjoy working for. 

My coworkers are so kind and caring. The company was so welcoming from day one. At times, the amount of positive feedback was overwhelming, especially coming from my last job, which was incredibly toxic. And now it's going away. I don't know what to do with myself this morning. All of my projects are on hold indefinitely. All of my work will go unused. 

I know it's just a job, but I'm mourning. And it's the kind of mourning that drags because this is a slow death. It's so uncertain since I won't know until they let me go when my particular job will end. It could be as early as April. I'm so hopeful about my next steps, but I'm still sad for this moment. My first instinct when I start to feel sad is to distract or delay, but today I'm holding space for these feelings. And yeah, this really fucking sucks.

Anyways, the reason I'm writing this out is because I know this is an opportunity to explore my shadow, my relationship with feeling the need to control things, when so much in life is uncertain. Also my relationship with grief and the uncertain way that can present in my feelings. This is an opportunity to explore my ability to let things go - or more accurately my inability to let go at times. As I was writing this, the song "Road to Nowhere" by Talking Heads came into my brain. It felt apt, but it also it's hopeful. So that's all the feels this morning. Or at least, that's the start of where I'm at.