'Welcome to the human race'

some thoughts on New Year's resolutions and the reality of change

December was a bit of a gauntlet for our family. We barely made it through influenza A—missed long-awaited field trips and end-of-year parties, and instead, got to go to the ER and be talked up by an indefatigable evangelist during the interminable pharmacy wait—when we were exposed to covid. We barely escaped covid when we got a truly impressive middle-of-the-night puke performance by the daughter who doesn’t know how to make it to the toilet. I sat on the floor reading a romance novel and drinking whiskey for a dark hour while I tried to forget the clean-up experience.

I’m guessing you have similarly defeating and colorful tales—flights cancelled, baggage evaporated, near misses and bright line diagnoses…and that’s not even counting the typical holiday blues and familial drama that we know comes right around now whether we mentally prepare or not.

Which is why, I’m here to say—go gentle into this new year.

You’re likely being bombarded with ads about eating healthier and exercising more and finally getting that meditation practice sparked. You’ve maybe made your vision board, created your in and out list, or journaled about your goals for 2023. That’s fine. That’s good…if it actually feels good.

And if you’re already using these tools as a bludgeon for your already tenuous self-esteem, if you’re seeing these ads or hearing people talk about whole 30 and telling yourself that you’re a worthless slug lacking in willpower and protein, well, please cut it out. Follow the money. The reason the turn of the calendar year is such a wildly popular time to start and then not stick with new diets, new exercise regimens, new skin care routines, is because someone profits off of our collective delusion that these things will make us happy, healthy, and complete.

Waking up from the delusion, in fact, is the start of true wholeness.

Not as thin as you’d like to be? Turns out that thinness doesn’t equal healthiness. Moving your body, breathing deeply, learning to identify, process, and communicate about your emotions, not staring at a computer all day, and eating food that nourishes you and isn’t full of chemicals does lead to healthiness, and all of these things are connected to wider economic and environmental systems that you don’t have a ton of control over (especially if you’re not rich and able to shape those systems or avoid them by buying alternatives). That’s not to say you can’t try to adopt some new rituals, learn some new recipes, become more aware of your food and alcohol addictions and unhook yourself from them. But in the midst of that, don’t forget that the most likely way to adopt a new behavior is to do it with other people (see Tina Rosenberg’s Join the Club for more on that) and do it with pleasure and inspiration, not self-recrimination and scales and joyless pursuit.

I like my friend Mia Birdsong’s twist on all this new year reinvention a lot. Instead of dry January, she is calling for Juicy January— “a January focused on physical, emotional, and spiritual hydration.” (You can join her by using #JuicyJanuary.) She says that rather than giving up things that don’t serve her, she’s focused on cultivating experiences and rituals that nourish and delight her.

For me, that’s reading, writing, going on a hike with dear friends, sitting in the garden and having a cup of tea with a neighbor, true solitude, learning about the enneagram, listening to podcasts that bring me closer to my own and others’ humanity, taking a leisurely shower, dancing to 90s hip hop, taking a quarter of a weed gummy (sue me, I’m old) and laughing my ass off with my husband, writing handwritten letters, learning the names of flowers and trees, taking an in-person yoga class with a wise, unpretentious teacher, collecting shells and rocks on the beach, riding my bike, doing “Superwoman” with Stella, making art with Maya, sending fan mail, learning to cook a new vegetarian dish, getting an uninterrupted night’s sleep.

What makes you feel, in Mia’s word (which she got from a friend), juicy? How might you do more of that this month, and through out this year, rather than setting yourself up for temporary success via deprivation followed by an inevitable backslide into your own beautiful, flaw-filled humanity? As my mentor Parker Palmer (and Superwoman’s namesake) often says, “Welcome to the human race.”