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 been indoctrinated into the belief system that a thin body meant a beautiful life. I first went to weight watchers when I was nine years old. I’d call 800 numbers and request catalogs to fat camp, which were advertised on television, promising to change our bodies and change our lives. I imagine going to the fat camp and losing weight, returning to school a new person, befriended by all the popular girls. No matter that my clothes were still falling apart or that my shoes flapped so much that I had to duck tape them. Being thin absolved me from the sin of being poor.
Let’s be clear; I was not a fat kid. I was chubby, I had a little belly, and I had full breasts by the time I was 12. This was enough to be called fat, and being called fat was the worst thing one could be called. It implied lazy. It implied sloppy. It stated outright: disgusting.
Each year my mom vowed: new diet, new life, and I vowed with her. I always failed. I never kept anything up for more than a month. And when I began to fail my mom chastised and punished me. To bed without dinner, no TV. No Friday night trip to red Robin. Or if we did go I wasn’t allowed to have a milkshake.
I got my revenge though. I got thin when I was 16. It took a lot of throwing up, a lot of deprivation, but it happened, and the world transformed. Every single person in my school saw me, whereas before I had been completely invisible. This message came through more fiercely than any fat camp promotion or mother’s willing. It was other people’s reactions to my newfound thinness that cemented my eating disorder and guaranteed I would remain sick for the next 25 years.
I’ve been recovering bulimic for about 11 years. I still deign to call myself recovered. I relapse sometimes. I forgive myself. But I’ve learned to accept my body as it is right now, and my disordered thoughts are visible now, instead of unconscious. I live in a body that people deem “fat,” and I am totally okay with that. I love myself. My happiness is more important than being thin.
This is why I refuse to set a “future me“ goal for the new year. Through my own life experiences I’ve learned that this idea of a future me is toxic. It robs us of our lives. When we think of the future me and all the things the future me could have if only something was different, we turn away from our present lives. We reject ourselves. Our vision is clouded by this idea that our happiness, our satisfaction, is somewhere over there, outside of us.
It isn’t. We can spend our entire lives jumping from one goal to another and remain the exact same person, our eyes set away from ourselves, never satisfied or content. Or, we can learn to accept our experiences, our bodies, our faces as we age. Not only to accept, but to love. To revere. Our happiness doesn’t belong to anyone else, and nothing else can facilitate it. Yes, things can give us joy. But our baseline, where we always return? We set that. Thanks to neural-plasticity nothing is set in stone. It is all changeable. So, we can create deep pathways in our brain that orient us to outside approval and satisfaction, or we can choose something different.
This year, I am wading further into the process of getting to know myself and my vow is to be more present in my life, as it is right now.
I’ll be leading a weekly movement class that incorporates somatics, yoga, meditation, beathwork, and writing. You can register for it here. I am also offering a New Year’s Eve Eve practice of writing, yoga, and self-inquiry. You can register for that here. If you feel allergic to all things woo, that’s okay. You can still come. All you need is the wish to cultivate more presence and acceptance in your life. Flyers are below.
The Artist’s Way Experimental Group
If you’d like to join my Artist’s Way Group, which begins in January, please leave a comment on this post (do not respond directly to this email) so I can measure interest and adjust accordingly. I am trying to figure out how to keep that separate from this newsletter but it may all just be connected, and whoever wants to participate can join in or not. Or, I may invite everyone who wants to join the group to come to Discord or another platform, where we can have more freedom for discussion.
365 Short Stories!
It starts on January 1st! This means you’ll get an email every single day with comments on a new short story. The short stories for the first 15 days on January are listed in this post. I’ll be sending out a full list for January soon, so keep an eye out. I want you to be able to read along with me! While some of these stories only exist in books, I am making an effort to source more than half of them from online sources, so it’s easier to read along. I have already put books on hold at my local library and you are welcome to do the same.
If you are SO READY for all of this, please become a paying subscriber so I can continue this with momentum and financial support!
Happy (soon to be) New Year and much love!!
