An ode to a year well lived, with its storms and calm waters.
There are two things I do religiously at the end of every year.
I take one week off from work to stay at home. This is the only luxury that is truly mine. There are no plans to meet friends, take off for a quick weekend getaway, go out for long lunches and dinners or late- night drives. This is the time to allow for no plans to be planned and no tasks to be completed. It is a time for reflection, reverence and reminiscing.
Completing another year always feel like an accomplishment. To have lived 365 days, breathed in the seasons, gone through storms and enjoyed calm waters is no small feat. Yet we tend to brush it aside, often flippantly. Another year another day – I’ve often heard people mutter. Yes! I want to tell them with the enthusiasm of a child. Another year! New months, new seasons and new storms. It is all quite exciting to me. I am not the same person I was at the beginning of the year. Sometimes the changes and shifts are subtle and sometimes radical. One year I am a better version of my previous self, and the next year I might manifest all my anger and rage with singular focus.
I allow and accept it all. Every version of me is a marker of what I lived through and who I am in that moment in time.
Reflection, reverence and reminiscing is not always quiet and contemplative. It can be a wild dance meant only for you. It can be a burst of creative energy that swallows you whole and spits you out when you are exhausted. It can be a walk in the park or a day spent in the bathroom. It can be anything and it can be nothing all at the same time. Whatever it is, it cannot be planned. You need to allow it to come to you. You need to have a mind unburdened with tasks and to do lists; make space for the thought to appear. This is what this one week does for me. I make space in my mind and body to not think, act or do continuously. I allow myself the rest and enjoyment of having lived another beautiful year – waiting to see the new version of me in the mirror.
The second thing is what I fondly like to call trimming the hedge. This is my yearly practice in self- care. To paraphrase a popular quote on the internet: people come into your life at a particular time and for a specific reason. When their work is done, you will inevitably part ways.
These people come from everywhere. They are friends, colleagues, peers, family and everyone else in between. They bring with them love and joy, learning lessons, life lessons and sometimes, hard lessons. I pay close attention to them all at the end of the year. I spend time thinking of them, of what they have brought to my life and what I have brought to theirs in return. I give thanks and send love their way. Some people bring immense joy and leave you with memories that fill your soul. But there are others who are meant to teach you the hard, hurtful lessons. It is not their job to soften your blow. Their nature is such that they mean to land you a mean punch. I accept my part in letting them into my life, remember the lessons they have taught me. Then I quietly remove them from my life. It can be seen as a form of ghosting – a ripping of the band aid – of sorts. You may think this cruel and harsh. But it is essential. The lesson is learnt, the purpose complete. I trim the hedge, cutting off the branches that are in my way, removing the thorns, the dying leaves and make space for new branches, new leaves and new growth.
This year, for me, has been life changing. I am 40 years old, coming to terms with my ageing body. Looking at myself in the mirror does not make me feel sad. I do not miss my youth. Many well-intentioned friends tell me that forty is the new twenty. But what does that mean exactly? A forty-year-old body with the heart of a twenty-year-old? That would mean I have not grown up at all! How absurd a thought.
Turning forty has not been like the other decades, eighteen, twenty or even thirty. I celebrated them all with equal fanfare and enthusiasm. But this shift this year has been palpable and electric.
I don’t want to be twenty. I am done with fumbling through my youth and insecurities. Like me, many of my women friends have turned forty this year. I asked them how they felt. The collective answer was a sense of empowerment, strength and belief in who they were, what they wanted to do and what they would no longer stand for. It was both overwhelming and heartwarming. I have never felt surer of who I am that I do today. I have shed my insecurities, letting them go one by one. I slowly removed the layers of masks I had worn over the years, cleaning the gunk that had collected underneath. I bathed away the rotting stench of expectations and let my desires surface again. The woman in the mirror took my breath away. She had been there all along, waiting for me to see her again. I embrace her today, as do all my women friends – our true selves that we had allowed the world to bury.
I wish for you, for all of us to celebrate our scars, not hide them; to be kind to our bodies, fat & flab included; to be authentic and not let masks hide our faces; to desire with abandon; to be the wild woman, free from the grips of expectations and duty; and give ourselves one week in the year when we don’t plan, do or achieve. A time to be whatever we want it to be.
I wish you a beautiful 2024.
“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories… water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
Women who run with the wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés