Making Way for the New Year

Rejecting “New Year New Me” and Embracing the Process of Integration

Hello my lovely friends,

It’s almost the new year! Time for a barrage of self-help and self improvement talk. I used to buy into it – the idea that, with a vow or vision board, I could change myself. Be a better person. I used to buy into the idea that I was not a good enough person already. That I was inherently flawed, that both my soul and my body needed fixing.

Some years, I’d resolve to go to the gym five days a week. Some years I did that. Some years I went to the gym five days a week two times a day. Because I was eating enough food I figured that this meant I was recovered from my eating disorder, but of course I wasn’t. My vow to go to the gym five days a week and my obsession with the stair climber and lifting heavy weights was all tied into the idea that my body was flawed and in need of shaping. Once my body was different my life would be different. Different meant better.

I’d been indoctrinated into this belief system when I was very young, led by my mother who had also be…