Happy three-weeks-into-the-New-Year! I hope the holidays treated you well, you have all recovered from the inevitable food comas, and you’re getting used to writing “2017” on everything.

It seems the thing to do these days to come up with a “word” or “phrase” to focus on each New Year. I kind of like this idea, and accidentally picked one for myself last year. This year I decided to do it on purpose, and as I was thinking through various words I like, this phrase jumped (I say jumped because it didn’t really “pop” in there; it made its presence QUITE clear) into my brain::

Be who you are.

I thought it was interesting I didn’t think “be yourself”. It was specifically “be who you are”. And I think there may be a difference there. Maybe it’s slight, and maybe I’m making it up, but it feels significant to me.

See, upon our first meeting, I introduced myself and informed you that I had just figured out what color my hair is. Yes, it’s a little silly. But my hair color is just a thing I have. A form of expression, maybe a tish of an obsession, but it’s just muh thang and oh well.

I discovered that I have auburn hair. Not naturally. But I feel most myself when I have auburn hair. And there are still a lot of things I have to figure out about myself. I’ve had a lot of distractions the last 9 months. We’ve been in survival mode. We still are. But discovering myself, the girl that’s hiding somewhere in there… it’s the next part of my journey I have to take. I know who I used to be. I was confident and secure in that. But then I got pregnant. Then I had a baby. Then I promptly got pregnant again. It was a difficult and stressful pregnancy and I had a really hard time with it (but that’s another story).Then we moved and had another baby. And then I fell apart. I turned into an angry disaster of a human and I lost every sense of being that I used to have. I had to come to terms with a medical diagnosis and accept it was going to be a part of who I am for the foreseeable future. And that became me. The depressed mom with children 360 days apart who hadn’t slept in what felt like a century, and that was it. It was all-encompassing. I had nothing else.

So this is the year that ends. This is the year I try a hundred things and probably fail at most of them. This is the year I’ll have to be ok with that. But I have to try. I have to figure out what I like, what makes me tick. My true and deepest passions, my life goals. What I want to be able to tell my grandchildren I did with my life when they ask. There’s somebody in there, and I bet if I can find her, I’d probably like her.

you will never find yourself anywhere else, you’ll find yourself in you {everlife – find yourself in you}

Tags: be yourself fear hope identity victory