Hopes for the New Year

In the New Year, I want to sing. I want a break from work and our hectic life, instead, I’d like to write about it. I’d like to write my thoughts and feelings, learn to play the guitar, make them rhyme and sing it all.

Can I do it? I tried it once, after watching Freaky Friday and deciding an electric guitar was what I needed in my life. I wanted to be that cool rocker chick like Avril Lavigne and Pink.

Maybe it’s embarrassing at my age to want to try something new, a new way of expressing myself. I think it was probably unseemly among my peers when I was 15 too.

I mean truly, what if I’m horrible at it and I subject my friends and family to my ghoulish sounds and then they have to politely praise my performance? What if I’m so bad that children cover their ears and dogs howl and no one tells me? My toddler would probably tell me...

I’m reminded of when I decided to learn to crochet. I bought all the supplies, I read the instructions and it just felt awkward. My hand positions ached and every step required intense concentration. I complained and stated over and over again that I didn’t understand why I couldn’t just do it. Why was this so hard when I could do other similar tasks? how different was it really from knitting? But the thing I needed to realize most was that I didn’t need to berate myself or feel frustrated and angry. Rather, I just needed to practice, slow and steady. Enjoy the quiet and the process. Suddenly I could pick up any pattern and make the item. Again though I found I didn’t have the patience or the time to complete larger projects and I’d get angry with myself for giving up. Later I found amigurumi and learned that I could make interesting creatures, that my children love, in one sitting.

I think what I truly want for the New Year is to be kind to myself. To try new things that interest me and not be embarrassed to fail. To change my internal dialogue so that I speak to myself the way I would any other person, with kindness and compassion.

This year, I want to love who I am, my body and my mind. I want to care for myself. I want to put who I am first sometimes, just sometimes.

This year I will sing.

I will travel, snowshoe, bake, dance, learn music, play basketball, enjoy my family, rest when I'm tired, and buy things that make me feel good without guilt. This year I will try not to feel sad all the time, and if I do, I will try and express it in a way that helps me to move on.

I will stop repeating to myself “why can't you do this? Why are you not better? It has been years since you lost her, just move on”. Perhaps this year I will be able to let myself mourn, take that moment and then continue with my day.

Then again maybe placing huge expectations on a New Year and assuming a fresh start will come on January 1st is too presumptuous. On second thought, I will look to the future with my three girls Grace, Joy and Hope.

Freaky Friday vibes for those too young:

Aspiring teenage musician Anna Coleman lives with her widowed therapist mother, Tess, and younger brother, Harry. Tess is about to marry her fiancé, Ryan, whom Anna has not entirely accepted as she has not properly moved on from the death of her biological father three years earlier.