One thing I want to emphasize for all of us is that we need to celebrate life.  There are so many wonders and gifts in this world, so many things we can do, so many things we can see, learn, feel, experience, create…we are part of this magnificent living hallucination and we can alter it at any time.  I have spent the last year altering my own hallucination, experiencing all the wonders and joys of finding out what really matters in this world, finding out what I really want in this world, finding out what I could do to make it happen, what I am capable of when I’m honest with myself about who I am.  The simplest conclusion I can come to is this: LIFE is what really matters, more importantly, ALIGNED, AUTHENTIC life.  We are powerful beings, living, loving, creating, thinking beings.  We have ideas of what this life is like, the reasons for us being here but the truth is we don’t have a freaking clue to any of it—we do not know those answers.  We are here on the same cosmic ride as anyone else.  No one knows what’s next, what’s after this existence.  No matter what we make for ourselves or of ourselves while we are here, we all end up going to the next step, the “on” all by ourselves, and we don’t know what that looks like.  So, while we are here, we need to make the most of it.  Live every moment we have fully, completely, totally in love with life and dive into experiencing all the joys and creative possibilities we are afforded while we are here.  Love, live, and give as much as we can.

Over the last year, I’ve made this a real focus.  When we are young, this type of behavior comes from a different space—while we are still learning who we are, it tends to revolve around pure desire, want, and a need for immediate gratification–impulse.  We live in a society fixated on immediate gratification for everything.  I’m 100% guilty of that as well, feeling the impatience when things don’t come when I expect them to or in the way I expect them to.  But over the last year I found myself in positions where immediate gratification wasn’t a possibility—if I’m honest, a lot of my life reinforced that things come when they want to, not when I want them to, but 2024 was a bit different.  I spent a tremendous amount of time in limbo, worrying, wondering about what would come next—again, not like I wasn’t familiar with that from before, but this last year brought with it a certain amount of gravitas and realization that we only live once—and that we need to use that time to live.  Limbo looks different when you are dealing with the reality of mortality, your own and those you love.  It looks different when you don’t know if the entire life you built is about to implode.  It looks different when the people you thought had your back suddenly dip out and it isn’t so clear what’s going on/where you stand with them anymore.  It looks different when the people you weren’t so sure about turn out to have your back more than those who said they always would.    

For me, 2024 shifted the dynamic from waiting for things to happen to putting myself firmly in the driver’s seat.  There was no more room for victimhood or martyrdom or any of the old patterns—it was time to get behind the wheel.  This is something that happens to everyone and it is sobering.  Understanding the choices I’ve made and witnessing the consequences of those choices in others allowed me to choose another path (when appropriate).  We can continue to choose the same things, waiting for something different to happen, we can choose to wish for things and wait to see what happens—or we can choose to try something different and take action toward what makes sense, what is right for us.  Shifting that perspective over the last year allowed me to take my health back, to take control back over my decisions rather than base them on what someone else thinks, and to put the idea into practice that if someone is going to treat me like an option, I can remove myself from the equation so I’m no longer a choice.  This past year also sent me on a journey of learning to trust, learning to find faith, learning to hear and follow my intuition again.  I have felt a dramatic shift in my energy and, as certain options were removed from my life, the path became clearer. 

A year can change a lot.  When it came to goals, I always thought a year was too long and I didn’t want to wait.  I was hoping for that instant gratification we’ve become so accustomed to.  Sometimes pieces need to fall into place and we can’t rush that.  Our life isn’t Amazon where we place an order for the perfect existence and we are transported to it.  Life is bumpy, messy, filled with loss at times—and we have to get lost.  In spite of all of that, those twists and turns and losing those we love, taking up the mantle of caregiver, the role of creator in our lives, putting ourselves as the responsible party for what comes and taking care of those we love, make us who we are.  Deciding our own worth, deciding what we are and aren’t willing to wait for, what we will and will not accept in our lives reinforces what life is: a giant playground waiting for us to fill in the blanks.  The fact that we are alive is worthy of celebration.  The fact that we can feel, think, do anything is worthy of celebration.  My plans don’t always pan out, but I know THE plan will.  Experiencing loss and change gives us the opportunity to appreciate life again, to choose again.  When I look at where I was last year at this time, I see a scared girl with a dawning realization that no one could make the choices she needed to make to get to where she wanted to go and that her current choices weren’t going to get her there.  She knew she needed to change and she was scared to do it because it meant losing who she knew herself to be.  I see that girl choosing to go for it, deciding she wasn’t going to wait for someone to tell her what the next move was, she wasn’t going to ask permission any longer and she wasn’t going to stay where she wasn’t valued anymore.  That girl accepted her worth and made moves to make sure the world knew the woman she is.  And now they do.  That birthday changed EVERYTHING for me.  I was born and may have been alive before that, but I came alive on that birthday.  Here’s to another year.