January always kicks my ass. Every new year I go through the same process: Doubt rears it’s ugly head…I wonder if I am a fraud. Am I good at what I do? Am I really full of shit? Why am I not able to help myself move through the beginning of another new year without all of this heaviness? I then begin to question all of my decisions over the last year and even before that. This is not a fun way to end the holidays or begin a new year.
Yet this is the way my soul sends me…Down this messy road of questioning everything about myself.
I do recover at some point and I continue my work, delving ever deeper into the hearts and psyches of others; creating workshops; doing what I am here to do to help others. And yes, there is always deeper clarity that comes after processing the last year’s stuff.
I always accept the decisions that I have made along the way…The decisions and choices that have brought me to where and who I am now. And of course who I am is always shifting…Like sand being washed away at the beach…Nothing stays the same. We may wish it to be so, dreading the change, but change is always there.
I live in a new neighborhood, and right outside my front door there was a mountain of dirt. It was there for the first 4 months that I lived in my house. All the while I knew that it was going to be removed to make room for new homes. Bulldozers and dump trucks started moving the dirt mountain in early December. (End of the year…Begin clearing out all that is old, all that needs to be moved out to make room for the new.) It has been noisy, messy, ugly and inconvenient. (Oh how the metaphors shine here!) I was talking on the phone today, looking out my front window, watching the bulldozer pick up shovelful of dirt after shovelful of dirt, loading the dump trucks that line up waiting to haul away the debris, noticing that the mountain of dirt is now only a mound big enough for the bulldozer to sit on. The thought occurred to me that it’s almost gone; that mountain has been reduced to a mere pile of wet, red Virginia clay, and the area around it is flat, ready for the construction of new homes and new beginnings.
In relation to my life, it is a wonderful analogy. Here I am at the beginning of a new year, having moved through the ass kicking process of removing the mountain of stuff that has accumulated within me over the last year. I’m not quite done yet, but I can safely say that what’s left is a manageable mound, and I am ready for new growth. The growth of self. It never ends you know…We are always expanding our sense of self. Until now, my process has been messy, often ugly and certainly inconvenient. Sometimes even noisy. But it’s almost done, and I can choose to do it differently next time.
Here’s to removing the mountains of old dirt, and creating a beautiful new place for new growth to occur. Happy, healthy, prosperous New Year to you!
