Happy new year! Let me start off by saying that I hope you all have a wonderful, healthy, happy and positive 2019.

In reality, we can choose to wake up any morning of the year and make a new goal and start the process of a new change but there is something about the fresh slate of a new calendar year that can really strike that inspiration. For me this year I really would like to focus on broad goals. I have two themes I want to focus on in 2019 and that is

Contentment

&

Growth

On the surface, those two things may seem to contradict themselves, but really they don’t.

Contentment :
Every season of life has its own joys and challenges and I truly am at a good place in life right now, and I want to focus on that. I want to focus on my blessings and realizing that in all aspects, I don’t “need” more than what I have now. Whatever additional opportunities and blessings come my way are extra, and yes I have goals I want to achieve but I think sometimes in life we get caught up in chasing things we want that we don’t have yet. I want to go after my goals but also be content with where I currently am and trust that life will open the right doors when they are meant to open. I do not want to force anything. I want to try to be positive again and allow that positivity to work its magic in my life.

2018 was a year of waiting. Waiting to see how Julia was doing based on her diagnosis. Waiting for her to babble. Then breathing a sigh of relief. Waiting for her to walk. Then breathing a sigh of relief. I am so eternally thankful for how well she is doing. But 2018 was a lot of anticipating and worrying to the point where for half of it I feel I was going through the motions. Between the anxiety around her development and my struggle with PTSD from her birth and the aftermath, my small achievement of starting therapy only to quit 3 weeks later because I didn’t feel right with the person I chose and then half convincing myself I didn’t need it anyway – I didn’t really achieve much personally in 2018 besides, survive, and while that is no small feat after everything 2017 threw at me, in 2019 I want to do more than simply survive. I want to feel like I am not just living but growing also. This brings me to my second goal….

Growth:
I want to grow as a human. I want to face my hurts from the past few years, and even far beyond that, and go back to therapy. I need to learn the coping techniques to face what I have been through and not necessarily “move on and accept it” but understand how to live without my pain consuming me. I hide it well but I have so much undealt with pain from my life that people don’t know the half of. I need to learn to cope so I can enjoy the present more. I want to read again. I want to start my day with affirmations again. (I did this a few years ago and it helped me tremendously, I highly recommend it for people who struggle with meditation. There are a ton of affirmations online you can find that cater to anything you may need in your life). I want to grow as a human. I want to improve my patience. Improve my positivity. I know I am capable of it. The things I have been through in life have given me strength but I need to allow softness back into my soul too, I need to be less afraid of vulnerability. The thing with growth or these broad goals, in general, is they take work. And what that work is, is not always obvious. But the first step for me is to have these goals and to apply them to my day to day life.
Waking up each morning with the question: How can I make this a good day regardless of what may happen? What can I do today that will allow me to go to bed tonight feeling as though I was more content, and did something that encourages my growth? It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be as simple as not dwelling on a small conflict that may arise that day.

I hope I can end this year feeling like I have grown as a person, and I hope you will too 🙂

*Edit: I apologize for any errors in this post. Still getting used to the new wordpress design