New Years resolutions are a great example of the baby/bathwater conundrum.
If you’re unfamiliar with the “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” phrase, it means “don’t cast out something good just because it’s mixed up with something bad.”
Some examples for me are organized religion (baby = the community, bathwater = patriarchal dogma) and 12-step groups (baby = spirituality/community, bathwater = the extreme binary threat of “you will either stay sober this exact way or you will go to jail, an institution, or die!”)
Political parties, the self-help/wellness world, and some cultural traditions: there’s some gold in them there baby hills, but there’s also dirty bathwater that’s got to be scrubbed off.
Which brings me to a new year.
The New Year’s Eve baby is the fresh start, the turning of a collective page, and the reflection a brand new year can bring. Just like I love a new journal with blank pages waiting to be filled, the start of a new year provides a blank slate to fill with whatever we choose.
The icky part for me is layered: it begins with how a new year seems to send the entire western world on a collective diet, and how anti-fatness reigns without question. This is especially activating for those of a us who grew up in diet culture and are now examining and trying to unlearn this stuff (which is most of us, especially if you identify as a woman.)
But while the bathwater is part collective, it’s also part individual. It can be looking back on your year through a judgmental lens:
I didn’t make headway on that goal/the relationship ended/I felt sad a lot.
I’m not the person who had the big transformation.
I didn’t have the year I thought I would.
The bathwater can also be comparing our insides to other peoples outsides, especially on social media: watching friends’ lives play out with growing families, job promotions, and “first holiday in our beautiful new house with a 15 foot Christmas tree, look at us struggle to get the star on!” posts that (if you’ve got some dissatisfaction with your own life brewing) can just make you salty.
The truth is that a new year is neither bathwater nor baby: it’s a neutral date on the calendar and we get to give it meaning. That’s freeing, right? And much of that meaning comes from our ability to be compassionate with last-year’s-version of us.
Just like last year we had no idea what circumstances 2022 would bring, how the mash-up of life and mental health and weather and other people would result in our year turning out exactly as it did, our baby 2023 selves don’t know either.
If you choose to make goals for 2023, can you wrap them in the love and hope you might have for a new baby, unaware of what obstacles they’ll surely face in this new life, but sure that their existence is good and sweet and something to be grateful for?
Can you look back at the last year with the same eyes of both discernment and love, recognizing that there is much to pull out and shine up as gold you want to keep, even while vowing to leave some things behind?
Some questions to sit with in this first week of 2023:
What am I proud of doing/creating/surviving in the past year?
If I could hand myself a note as I walked into 2022, what would it say?
What did I learn about myself in the past year?
How can I use what I learned to be more gentle with myself in the coming year?
What do I want more of in 2023?
What do I want less of?
How can I make goals for 2023 while remembering that my value isn’t “out there” in some accomplishment or change…but always and already existent within?
New Year’s resolutions are kinda symbolic of life: we don’t really have any idea what’s in store for us, and that uncertainty can either be paralyzing and anxiety-inducing, or give us reason to make these lives we do have sacred and meaningful.
I hope that you can bring compassion to the very innocent human who is drawing intentions and plans for this fresh new year.
Wishing you a happy 2023. I’m so glad to be in your orbit.
xo
Melissa
Speaking of 2023, I’ve got some new offerings to share:
I’ve been spending 2022 completely diving into a new healing modality called breathwork. It’s felt like the whisk that mixed so many other tools that I’ve been practicing together, and because it’s been so transformative for me, I’ve recently become trained in facilitating it.
You can read more about my experience here - I’m opening up my schedule to see a few 1:1 clients, and you can sign up for a discovery call with me right here. But I’m most excited to bring it to the next women’s circle:
The next virtual women’s circle is Sunday January 29th 2023 from 11-12:30pm PST. I’d love to have you, and you can sign up right here. It’s open to all who identify as women+/femme and you’re welcome to share it with friends whom you long to share a deeper connection with. Learn more here.
ARE YOU ASKING THE QUESTIONS YOU’LL WISH YOU HAD?
The Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals are designed to build connection and legacy between parents and children. Consider writing down answers for your kids, asking questions of your family members, or sending one of the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals to a person you care about today. Find them here.
If you know a motherless mother, I made a few journals for her. Learn more about them below.
