Season 2; Episode 1

At the end of the year, bloggers, friends, family, traitors – as you might call them – start to infer that perhaps maybe they’ll come up with something new for 2025. They’ll turn a new leaf. Start a new life. Go to a new gym. Try a new routine. Ditch an old routine. They’ll start saving on a new budget plan. Everything is shiny and new and you’re looking around like – what the fuck. I don’t know if I can handle do something new because tomorrow marks the start of a new year. 

In January, all you’re required to do is survive. In fact – I’d argue that all you have to do every month out of the year is get through it. But if you need some validating, here let me help. 

I like resolutions. I do. I also like lists, and trying new things, and breaking out of comfort and complacency that sometimes plagues my mundane and every day. It’s why I like to travel. It’s why even though I’m home most days, I still like to get up, make my bed and take a shower, because if I stay in the same clothes I slept in for the entire day, my depression settles over me and I’ve found myself sleeping far more than were actually necessary. And not to get off topic, I also have to add that napping doesn’t actually take away the headache that was threatening to keep me off the grid. Sometimes the exact opposite happens – I take the nap and wake up with the headache, which defeats resting at all. But I digress. 

It’s important for a person like me to keep doing a variety of things in a variety of different ways because otherwise I’ll sink into a hole that no one – rarely even myself – am able to climb out of very effectively. So resolutions are a good, surefire way to at least get me thinking of doing something else. 

However – while I’m vehement, adamant, and maybe even a little arrogant about setting new goals and resolving into new habits – I am one thing if nothing else – I’ve learned to be gentle on myself. None of my goals or plans or ideas or new things to do’s have deadlines. They’re just new tries, new ways, new objectives, new ways to think about what to do next’s. 

And I think that’s the secret.

January is notoriously dark. And dreary. I once read a meme that called December an excitable month of lights and joy whereas January was a bucket of suck. While we can illuminate the last month of the year with all those twinkling Christmas vibes, January plows down the door in its five-week madness and wreaks havoc on our energy, our mood, and our desire to get up and do anything. 

How are you possibly able to follow through on resolutions when you barely have the will to get up and take down last month’s tree, pay last month’s bills, and not bemoan that last month sucked all the energy from your veins. 

I get it. I really do. And that’s why I encourage you to remember that all you have to do in January is survive it. However that works for you.

The hardest part for us as women (and probably men, but because I’m not one, I’ll not speak for them) is that we allow ourselves to indulge in December (let’s get real – probably Halloween to New Years, right?) and so not only are we dealing with the woes of how much last month financially cost us, we’re also staring down the mirror at what it physically cost us as well. And those curves we’ve acquired would probably not bother of us if it hadn’t been for every fucking gym ad that we see pop up in our newsfeeds encouraging us to sign up for less than a dollar because we’re meant to believe that January is the month of resolutions. Best suit up our ass for memberships to get into shape our social media tells us to be. 

Ah what horsehit

Listen, all you’re required to do in January is survive. To the best of your ability. And maybe that means you did pop up on the treadmill every morning. Or it did mean that you followed through on saving each week on that new budget plan you scoured. Maybe it means that whatever your resolution was, it’s working. And that’s awesome, too.

But here’s what happens if it doesn’t, isn’t or won’t. If your resolution started strong, but failed miserably two weeks in, two days in, two hours in.

Nothing happens. 

Life is a marathon, not a race. You’re going to go up one side of the mountain, and drink from a a water fountain. You’re going to walk part, you’re going to run part, you’re going to sit out for a second. You’re going to have your people cheer from you from one side of the stands, and then you’ll not see them for a stretch and wonder where they are, until you turn that corner and see them again. You’ll know they’ve been championing you all along. 

So give yourself grace. Give yourself the pat on the back for trying, living, doing, breathing, taking a pause, being gentle with yourself, and remembering, the best thing you can do about January is survive it. Because it isn’t easy. It’s the steepest climb of the entire year. 

For me – this has been a staggeringly different start to my year than recent memory. I took off for the East Coast on a whim and a prayer. After finding myself independent, with my children having all moved out, finding myself single, after my five-year relationship fell apart, I decided that I was going to load up my car with my clothes and my memories and head for the coast. I haven’t found full-time employment, I haven’t entirely found myself. But I have decided that what’s best for me was the ocean air and being three provinces away from where the heartache was taking over and threatening to pin me down while I fished for air. 

Instead, I’m spending January surviving. And I hope you are, too. 

Brené Brown is an American author and podcaster, who has studies vulnerability and courage. And one of her lines of wisdom is one that truly speaks to me. She says: “Talk to yourself like someone you love.” 

How many days and nights are we going to spend staring into the proverbial mirror of shame and guilt and berate ourselves for our shortcomings? 

How easy would it have been for me to lay in my bed of regret and nag myself of why didn’t I’s, and how could I have let’s, and what could I have been different’s. I can allow myself the shame of letting myself down, watching my relationship crumble, wondering if I really released my children to the world of adulthood with all the tools they require. I could ask myself why I didn’t get hired somewhere sooner, why I went to the East Coast instead of facing my failures at home. I could. And after I’d battered and bruised myself to pieces, where then would I be? 

Certainly not surviving January. 

But what if I talked to myself like someone I loved. What if I looked myself in that same mirror and told myself – I am proud of you. Your children moved out because they were ready. You gave them the tools, and taught them the skills to be ready. But moreso, you are there to catch them when they fall. What if I looked in the mirror and told myself – it was brave to leave that relationship. It was brave to say – this didn’t work, despite the tries, and the attempts, and the multiple reconciliations. It didn’t work. Jamming pieces together that don’t fit isn’t success. It’s prolonging you from finding the pieces that do. And it was courageous to jump in your car and head to the Coast on a whim and a prayer and a tank of gas. Because every day you sat by the ocean, and every day you stayed with your friend, and every day you became a little more you than you ever were before. 

What if I looked in the mirror and prided myself on surviving January instead of questioning why I didn’t do more than just survive? 

While you’re out there trying to handle the day, and handling the next set of storms that may blow your boat far off course, remember today. The day you chose to handle your life with care, the day you opted to give yourself the grace to just survive. The day you knew that you weren’t expected to do more than just get through the hard times because the good times will be greater because you’ll be there to enjoy them. 

Instead of saying – all I did was survive … talk to yourself like someone you love. Try saying – I survived January.