You know what I’m talking about, right?

On December 31st we are giddy with the excitement for the resolutions, the diets, the hope for the next year. And now here we are, a week and a half in and we are starting to realize that all the baggage we were carrying with us last year is still trailing along behind us.

Wouldn’t it be great if the new year was a door that closed tight behind us, locking all the pain of the last year behind us?

But it doesn’t work that way.

All the yuck comes with us until we work through it.

Some might say we just need to leave the past in the past. But if we haven’t worked through the hard things weighing us down, is it denial to try and walk away from it?

It’s not as simple as just forgetting the pain and moving on. That’s not how our minds and our souls work. We must address the hard stuff, or it will sneak into every part of our lives and take control.

The hardest thing I have ever had to realize is that there is darkness inside all of us.

We don’t really want to go there.

We want to believe that there are bad guys and there are good guys, and that we are the good guys. But we could just as easily become the bad guys if we aren’t honest with ourselves and aware of who we are.

So here is a new year. Same old struggles, same old baggage. We entered January skipping and now midway through we are shuffling along, remembering why last year was so hard.

Let’s look at our lives holistically. Let’s eat right, and exercise, and go to counseling, and meditate, and journal about the really scary things we can’t tell anyone else yet.

Let’s honor ourselves and be honest with ourselves. Honest about our struggles, our addictions, our downfalls.

The places where we feel we fall short are often our greatest gifts.

Allow yourself to fall short. That’s so much more than okay. You don’t need to pretend. We are all falling short. Awesome, right?!

WE ARE ALL FALLING SHORT!

What a relief!

New year my friends. Are we going to live bold, vulnerable, beautifully messy lives?

YES we most certainly will.