January arrives every year with a familiar invitation.
Be better.
Do more.
Fix what is broken.
We greet it earnestly, armed with resolutions, planners, and promises declared from one year to the next. Yet somewhere beneath the noise of self-improvement lies a quieter truth within us—a blueprint not for perfection, but for worthiness.
Now, the holidays have passed, and the music has faded. The festive lights have been packed away, unless you’re like my family, with that task still sitting patiently on the to-do list. Midnight has come and gone, and the glistening “magic” has faded into Cinderella’s pumpkin reality of winter, which has now settled in.
That winter is not just outside our windows, but often inside our chests. For many, this season carries more than frigid temperatures. It carries absence. It carries memory. It may even carry the ache of someone who is no longer with us.
Perhaps this past year you said goodbye to someone you deeply love. That goodbye may have come with unfinished conversations, unresolved tensions, or choices you now revisit with a gentler—or harsher, eye. Grief has a way of doing that. It invites reflection, but not always with kindness. It can spotlight the parts of ourselves we wish we had shown differently, more bravely, more lovingly.
And here we are at January 21st.
Long past the glow of New Year’s Day.
Likely past the point where most resolutions have already been broken.
Past the fantasy of a flawless restart.
It is here that we become real again, with the opportunity to commit once and for all to the continuous practice of intentioned acceptance.
This is our finest hour—not because we have it all figured out, but because we are willing to stand in the full truth of our humanity. To acknowledge that we will stumble. That we will get it wrong. That some days will send us soaring through the clouds or down to our knees in a puddle of our own tears. In all states, we remember that the promise we make to ourselves is a commitment to presence.
Each inward step brings us closer to a quiet, unwavering light. One that shines not because we are flawless, but because our hearts beat for love—the same love we shared with those we miss, the same love that moved them through the earth and continues through us, carried forward in how we live, how we care, how we show up.
Let this be your New Year: to stand for who you are, who you have been, and who you are becoming. May you thrive, and may you find yourself, at times, almost blinded by the brilliance of your own exquisite light.