resolutions for radical self-hope
This time of year is barren, open, beautiful. On Boxing Day we made our way to Minnehaha Falls for a walk to watch the rushing water—jarring and awe-inspiring to see in December—but I was more taken with the tree branches.
Trees give off different vibrations throughout each season, but this time of year the currents of their energy are extra potent. They’ve lost what no longer serves them; they are naked, exposed, and somehow more powerful for it. We are able to see them most clearly: they have been worn down to their most essential.
It’s a state of being that seems to match these end-of-year days filled with vulnerable, in-between thoughts; days when we reflect on what has been and hope for what is to come. I gave up on New Years resolutions long ago, but I do like to start January with a new resolve for something.
I didn’t know what that resolve for 2024 would be until I started cleaning my office the other day. I was determined to scrub every inch of the room, throwing away assorted knickknacks that didn’t serve me and post-it notes for grocery lists from months gone by. (Marie Kondo would be quietly horrified.) Eventually I made my way to the heavy bin filled to its brim with journals. I have been keeping one since I was 12 years old, so every few years I go through a few random ones and see what they have to teach me.
This year I found a collection of old emotional odds and ends: some entries of self-loathing, long-ago breakups and tangled up hurt. I also read pages of gratitude, entries where I listed the large and small comforts that made up my life. As I kept traveling further back in time, I found more splashes of hopefulness in spite of my intensity—more self-assurance that I could come back to an inner-knowing in spite of all my messy emotions and complications.
It was a youthful sort of faith—some may call it naiveté—that encourages us through our growing up, and tells us things will work out even as we try and fail, even as we strive to be accepted or make the wrong choices.
One particular entry I found was a perfect example of that.
The entry was from a difficult time when a few things converged to make me feel like I had failed miserably in multiple areas of life. I had moved to Los Angeles and tried to pursue an acting career after getting my heart broken and blowing up pretty much all of my friendships in the process. (If you’ve heard this one, skip to the end!) The final kicker was that I was in a small albeit freak accident where I quite literally busted my face. I couldn’t eat or drink normally and had to have a few corrective surgeries.
I arrived home without direction and feeling forever fucked up. In my young brain, it felt like all of those events were tied together, like I had chosen wrong again and again, and couldn’t trust myself or bet on myself anymore. I wrestled with a deep shame that—if I’m being honest—has come and gone all my life, but seemed magnified by that particular string of events when I was 19 years old.
Now, this story seems trivial; and I wouldn’t rewrite that chapter even if I could. However, all of this failure at the time felt like the end of my world. But buried among entries of self-doubt and desperation was this singular note, a kernel of that calm inner-knowing, that I had never seen in all of my journal-digging:
Nov 27th, 2012
You do not need to feel ashamed. You have made mistakes just like other people. You are not alone in your mistake-making, so stop acting like it is some badge of secret dis-honor that you wear on your face with that scar. That was an accident, and you made it, and if you go back to Los Angeles you do not need to be afraid or sad because what’s done is done and you are becoming different from who you were then. You are a human being and that can be beautiful enough if you let it. You do not need to be afraid. I love you.
-C
I didn’t remember having any of this faith at the time, but apparently it was in there, glimmering among the discouragement. They are simple words, but ones I want to remember. I hold onto this journal entry and all the others for these seedlings of hope that surprise me and shake me up a bit. To be reminded that even in times where I felt void, empty, and lost, there was a small voice reminding me that those seasons are beautiful, too.
There is so much talk about self-help for the new year: all the ways you can improve yourself in order to get what you want. But what if, instead, we leaned into self-hope: that inner-knowing that even in our imperfections and failures, we are enough?
As the year comes to a close, I hope these words from an intense, perhaps naive 19-year old fill you with the youthful freedom to cast aside doubt and see that there is still time to accept yourself for the messy, beautiful human that you are. That you are not alone in your mistake-making. That every day you are becoming different than you once were—which is always something to revel in. That even in those moments when you feel vulnerable or exposed, you could think of yourself like the tree branches in December: you are your most essential self; and isn’t that something to have faith in?
**
For 2024, I wish you peace, love, and self-hope—along with all of these things, in no particular order:
Peace around something difficult you cannot make up your mind about.
Freedom from other people’s opinions.
A day to sit and stare at the ceiling of your room and do nothing but daydream, remember fragments of memories, and cast wishes to the universe.
The wisdom that the universe is benevolent.
The ability to relax into the timeline that is of your highest good.
A neck massage.
Hearing the right words at the right time from someone who matters to you.
The ability to quit something that’s been dragging you down: media consumption, gossip, negative self-talk.
A tin of buttery sugar cookies with jam-filled centers.
A really long nap with a fluffy dog right next to you.
To hear all the nice things said about you when you weren’t in the room.
To see yourself through the eyes of a child who loves you.
All day to read your favorite book.
A day with your best friends in a sunny spot, with all-day margaritas and no hangovers.
The confidence to put art into the world without needing it to be perfect.
A hug from your most nurturing friend.
Feet that never get cold.
A whole day in bed reading whatever you like in Nancy Meyers-esque pajamas, with a tray full of fresh pastries and unlimited hot beverages.
Time to make art.
Time to think.
To remember you are loved.
-C