18/01/2023
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
- Mary Oliver, excerpt from Wild Geese
2022 felt like an important chapter in the story of my life. No baby was born, I didn't move to another country, and from the outside - everything sort of looks the same.
But something shifted under the skin that contains my body, and behind the walls where I reside. There is a fierceness to my clarity that we can all be better - and by better I mean softer and kinder with both ourselves and each other.
In my quest to grow up and level up this past year, I found that every equation started and ended with me. Not in a selfish way, but in a responsible for my life kind of way. That meant getting to know me better, even if I thought I knew. Every relationship in my life depends on it, my health depends on it, and my ability to support others in this process also depends on it. Turns out the most healing place in the entire world is inside myself and my sense of ease and belonging in this world is anchored by my internal compass.
We become better by getting to know ourselves better.
So in honor of what this year has taught me, I want to make a New Years prayer instead of a resolution… That we will all take the experiences that life hands us and approach them as opportunities to get to know ourselves from the inside, out. And I pray that we will all wake up with the desire to be better - for ourselves and each other and the world we live in that so desperately needs us to get our priorities straight. I pray that we choose to practice compassion over competition and judgement, and that this year, Love wins 💛
I’ll be leading monthly workshops at ANU to bring this prayer to life. If you are interested in joining, reach out. Info will be up on the new website soon.
