January 2024

Reflections on loss, love, happiness, and new years.

A new year is upon us.

I have found many of us use this time to assess or review our previous year and ourselves while putting forward what we’d like to achieve or focus on for the next year. I do love reflections from a place of simply reflecting, without judgment or criticism of ourselves or what we did to get through the last year of our lives.

I typically do The Year Compass (a free download you can print off,) which offers prompts and space to dream about the year ahead.

From my reading over the last two weeks, I have noticed a theme of happiness. So many articles (some linked below) are discussing happiness. And I have to think if we are all searching for happiness, maybe 2023 was a trying year for many of us; perhaps most of us. 2023 did not leave many of us feeling good, from global unrest and collective traumas to personal struggles with cost of living, the lingering effects of a pandemic (while still dealing with Covid,) and a general sense of being unhappy overall.

You are not alone if you feel this way. 2023 was a confusing year for me. Though I’m used to a manageable melancholy hanging, things felt heavier and darker this year. I have projects I never started, barely worked on others, and some I avoided completely as my attention was needed elsewhere – family, loss, and tending to my heart. I did not think on happiness, though, or wanting to chase happiness as a panacea to what ails me or ails any of us.

I have thought about happiness many times as I have thought about sadness — aspects of a human life that are guaranteed to come and go over and over again. I think we want happiness, but more so, I think we want safety, stability, love, consistency, trust in being, and an ease in living. Happiness does not protect us from pain, but being able to find joy, pleasure, safety, and love in the midst of pain is what we can become better at doing.

Another theme that certainly connects to happiness is the idea of meaning and purpose in life. I often hear this in clinical work, where people follow the rules to be “happy” or content and find themselves unhappy, apathetic, or completely void of any motivation or enthusiasm for the day-to-day. So maybe we aren’t trying to find happiness but what we think happiness will help us feel. And sometimes what we want to feel is rooted in meaning. What is meaning for you? What makes life special? Purposeful? Where do we find meaning?

Given my propensity for sadness, I have often clung to small things I did have control over. Micro-moments of happiness do add up, and sometimes, that is all we have. I know I have had seasons where the smallest things meant the most, not because they were overtly amazing but because I gave them meaning. Meaning is personal, and yet it enriches our experiences.

Rituals, making the mundane special, and creating or looking for beauty in every day. I do this with my practices (journaling, meditation, movement, sensory noticing) and surrounding myself with things that feel nurturing instead of numbing (and I am so good at numbing. I admit, most of Q4 2023 was spent doom scrolling to manage or escape pains of grief and overwhelm.) I now have a bit more space to feel with life and be in my practices. I’ve also started a “Small Wins” note on my phone where I collect little wins – say, a free tea, a compliment, or an unexpected kind gesture or bit of goodness.

Anything can be meaningful if we give it intention. The same goes for making something magical; all you need is intention.

I’m giving myself January to rest and nest. I’m not sure what the future months of this year hold, but I, and many of you, might need a quiet, dark, wintering season to allocate our resources to our own care and keeping. I have energy for my work and myself these days, and that…is ok.

I have a deep aversion to the shame, blame, and rigid, intense culture of hustling, pressure, and success as a measure of how much we can push ourselves or abandon ourselves (which is what a lot of previous New Years and their “resolutions” have felt like. I have a history of not liking resolutions.) Gentleness with myself accomplishes far more good than harshness ever has.m

Spring will come, the days will be longer, and happiness will take on different forms with different seasons of life.

My practices keep me afloat in these seasons. There is a saying – When we hold to our practices, our practices hold us. What are your practices? Perhaps it’s as simple as taking a moment of gratitude upon waking as we open our eyes and take our first stretch in our body.

Here is a simple practice I really like that you can do any time of day: a tea ritual.

Tea Ritual: 

Make a cup of your favorite tea. Holding the cup (safely,) close your eyes. Notice the warmth of the mug on your hands and give yourself a moment to be with this warmth, letting it radiate through your hands and body. Opening eyes as needed, bring the cup closer to your face and allow yourself to smell the tea, or notice the steam coming from the cup that might meet your face, nose, lips. Breathing in this moment, and as temperature allows, take a sip of your tea. Notice the warmth, the flavor, how it moves in the mouth. Continuing to be with this moment, noting your senses, and allow yourself a few minutes here; continuing to be with with and moving through the sensory experience of tea.

Perhaps you follow this tea ritual with a few lines of writing in a journal.

What I’m reading

9 Women Philosophers To Inspire You In 2024

Happy Books (all about happiness)

Don’t Wish for Happiness. Work for it.

Breaking the Cycle of Body Shaming as a Mother

Books: Revisiting Questions for Ada, a poetry book I’ve always enjoyed, and reading Birth Control: The Insidious Power of Men Over Motherhood.

Teas of the month

This Restoring Roots blend from Clipper is so good for winter seasons.

Big fan of the quality and health benefits of Pique Matcha.

Updates

+ Nothing to report now, but I will use this area in the future for book news, social posts (like this new share on TikTok,) or other things that have a timely nature to them.