Today is January first and most people celebrate the "New Year" on this day. Many people celebrate it by celebrate activities and then decide they are going to start making better choices.
That decision usually lasts until the middle of the month and then it all sort of returns to whatever they were doing before the decision.
So many "new years resolutions" are around health and wellness and lifestyle choices and truthfully having little habits in place to have a more healthy life is always a good thing. But, most of us get lost in the sticking with it.
I can 100% relate to this. I remember in my early 20's when I was trying to cut sugar out of my diet I struggled with the consistency. I would not eat desserts, but then I would eat ketchup or animal crackers or something that seemed to probably not have sugar in it, but still most certainly did.
Until, I decided to get serious.
At this same time in my life, I was diagnosed with PCOS. If you do not know what that means: Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome. I was living a, what I thought, "healthy life". I worked out, I avoided carbs and fat (ps. this is not how to be healthy) and tried to think positive thoughts. I knew about chemicals affecting us all the time and I tried to avoid them. In fact I wrote a paper on it for college; all about how women of color and women in general were targeted with endocrine disruptors and other unknown chemicals. I thought I was doing really good things for my health; and I was, but I really struggled with kicking sugar and wheat out of my life.
But, I stayed with it and tried. I kept returning to that desire to improve my life and overall wellbeing. Not because it was trendy or a fad, but because I lived kaizen.
Kaizen is a Japanese word that means improvement or change for the better. I did beat myself up about not getting it right. I've since learned grace and no longer get down on myself about not always maintaining that improvement.
But the important part is I kept returning to that choice and little by little down the road I can look back and see changes I made and how they have impacted everything in my life now.
That was then, and now I see, that while making surface changes, or changes in the physical realm, the place change really takes root and becomes reality is in the metaphysical.
This is why I have more grace now. Because it takes the physical time to "catch up" with the metaphysical. It does not happen overnight and it certainly does not happen just from making one decision on a day in the middle of winter. It happens over time with making that choice over and over and over again.
It happens in the body first, in the breath, in the space you create for yourself, by choosing that decision.
It's all quite hard to explain and understand even, but if you comprehend what I am saying you understand this from a place of silent knowledge. A knowing that you know with no explanation of how you know it or where you learned it.
We require the space with ourselves first to make real and effective change. And so often that real and effective change can look like a lot of trial and error on the surface.
And, I was trial and erroring in my health for a long time.
I landed in the ER with a cyst the size of a grapefruit on my left ovary. It was being twisted by the weight of the cyst and losing blood flow and this is why I passed out.
The doctor in the ER scheduled me for a surgery and in I went to get all better. I came out with half of my left ovary missing and a diagnoses of PCOS and an uncertainty that I would have children. (We tried for 5 years with no child.)
It was a hard time, but it is what brought me closer and closer to the work I do today.
It brought me into a deeper connection with my body.
I did start living not from a place of "I should" detox, cleanse, reset, make a resolution; to a place of what a gift it is to serve my body this way.
No shoulds, just honor. No judgement for when I "failed", just the intentional return to truly loving myself well.
It is really an honor to live in our bodies. They are truly holy and divine.
And after I birthed my first child, I began to understand that on a much different level than ever before.
I started to communicate with my body. To speak to it, to love it, to intentionally nourish it. Because, I knew if I was going to make it through motherhood in the 21st century without a village, I was going to have to do all the nurture, nourish and love for myself that I wanted. I was going to have to commune with every living coherent part of my being, intentionally.
I'm talking self massage, delicious dinners, processing big feelings....yep, all of the things. Little by little with my constant returning to deciding to make that space in my body, it all became a way of life for me in the physical realm.
Now, I live more nourished than I did before having children, even with two littles now, because, I made the space in my body for this change, every time I returned to myself tenderly.
I used to believe that ailments and major health issues like cancer were the result of things wholly in the physical realm. To many toxins, too many food like substances, too much time indoors....but really it is the absence of life.
It is the absence of a living coherent life. In fact all of every imbalance in the body is usually just that. A lack of coherence on some level.
The absence of living foods, the absence of fluid emotional processing, the absence of support, the absence of living space (our modern homes hold the geometry of unwellness all around us).
The important piece here, is often we look at a situation we want to change and just think of the change we want and think of creating it.
I want to be more healthy, so, I will eat this, and move like this....and
Well, it is not that simple.
Sometimes the thing that will create the change is removing and releasing. Letting go of those big hard emotions, letting go of those toxic relationships, letting go of the McDonald's and Oreos, removing the sugar, removing the toxins; moving out the things that are not in alignment with the space we are creating for ourselves.
This is a huge part of health. So often we just think, to start a new thing, but if we don't let go of some other things, that new thing will not be able to take root in our lives.
We have to return to ourselves, our truth, we don't need that....you name it. We need to love ourselves more than the habit, the idea, the emotion.....
So, on this day, as you may be considering what new habit you want to pick up or do this year, consider also, what do you need to go of.
What in your life will feel deeply nourishing if you release it?
And then make the necessary steps to do just that.
Journal. Weep. Mourn. Throw away. Move. Do what you have to do to remove that from your life, so the new can have some space...
and along the way, give yourself grace.
Because you will have to return to yourself again and again. And it will look like trial and error and it will look hard and messy somedays.
But you will make the steps. And you will make the space and it will at some point become second nature.
It all takes time and an impeccable movement towards kaizen. To being all you are meant to be. And releasing what is not meant for you.
Did I ever cut sugar out, yes. Did I start eating sugar again, yes. Does this mean I failed, no.
It's the intent of returning to your choices over and over, until the fullness of space has been made within your being to truly embody that choice.
So, if you sit down to do your new years resolutions or consider new habits you want to take on, first consider what you need to let go of to do create the space for that new to become your reality.