The New Year found me with my feet sunk to my ankles in the sand and salty surf, my glass and my face raised to the sky, and tears in my eyes. What a ride! 2021 was a year of extreme change. I do not exaggerate when I say that every single thing about my life changed.
- The house I live in
- The bed I sleep in
- The district I vote in
- My relationship status
- My name
- My career
The only thing that stayed the same was the love in my relationships. My loves – family, friends, and animals – have been the rocks in the rapids, the place where I have been able to stand as the world flows hard and fast around me.
Your list might not be the same as mine, but I’m sure you can relate! 2021 was “that year” for a most people. We see it in The Great Resignation, we see it in the number of pandemic losses we have suffered, the moves to work from home, the school closures. No human life has been untouched.
Such a shock to the system as we have experienced – a mix bag of light and darkness, but all very intense – calls for us to sit with the question – Who am I now?
There are parts of us that are pure essence, eternal, unchanging, powerful. But there is so much that shifts in a time of so much change. Who am I now that I am Hill and not Brown? Who am I now that I no longer go to work at the place I worked for nearly 12 years? Who am I now that I wake up in my own house in a different neighbourhood? Who am I now that I am a wife? An entrepreneur? A person who works from home?
This New Year feels like a blank page where I get to write the answers. But I get to do it slowly, at my own pace. I don’t need to write immediately, know immediately, label immediately, become immediately. I get to sit with this new life this new being, sink into this fragrant bath of newness and let its warmth slowly steep into my being. In times past the discomfort of not knowing would keep me awake, my mind working overtime, words flying through my thoughts with me choosing and discarding looking for the labels for the “New Me”.
Not this time. If there is one thing I have learned from the life changing years we have just lived through, it is that we don’t need to know but only to become. The “New Me” will unfold herself like the flowers on my passion vine – delicately, effortlessly, beautifully, and in her own damn time.
For now, I will sit with the question over my cup of coffee. “Who am I now?” My intentions are set and I will work toward my goals step by step. But I will become rather than force, listen rather than demand an answer, and sit in patience holding vigil for the new version of me.
Would you like to sit with me? Click the image below, and we can begin.
