Last year at the start of the new year, I wrote a blog about all that I learned and some goals that I wanted to achieve for 2021. This morning as I went back and read it, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgic for the girl who had no idea what the next year would look like for her. She said that her word for the year was “intentionality,” to be intentional in everything that I did or any information consumed. I believe that this goal was *mostly* achieved. I was intentional about the way that I treated others, the conversations that I had, the art that I created and the people that I surrounded myself with. The lesson that I have since learned, however, is that you can have the best of intentions, but intent does not always determine outcome. 

I can make a grocery list of all the different intentions I had for what this year would have looked like for me, and some of them happened and some did not. I can confidently state that even the things that happened (ex: move somewhere and get a job) did not look the way that I had “intended” it to. This is not to say that the success I achieved this year didn’t live up to my expectations, but to say that sometimes things look different so that different can be achieved. 

I will look back on 2021 as my year of being uncomfortable. I feel as if this year I was stripped to the very core of who I am as a person and expected to grow. The difficulty with that is, I was ripped from the ground and replanted across the country. I had to find the sun and the water when my roots felt like they were always tugging in different directions. Could I plant myself here when nothing feels like home? Could I succeed despite having been watered by other people and now I’m in the desert? I can say now, yes. My roots from home always pull me back to my morals and values. And my new roots are grown entirely by me, reminding me to trust the process of authentic growth. I am strong, I am healing, and I am no longer afraid of storms. 

Everything that I am going to talk about are things that I know to be true but am still practicing. I think its important to note that these blogs come off with certainty, and even when I go back to read them I am often in awe of her confidence and clarity. That is because the entries that I write when there is no clarity are mostly kept private. They are raw and real and vulnerable and I want it to say that moments of uncertainty are just as welcoming to growth as the moments of clarity. But the moments of clarity are the moments that we need to hold onto. What triggered this clarity in your mindset? How did it feel? What were you doing? How can you recreate this feeling? Did you write down your thoughts so you can go back and read them when the clarity fogs? These are questions that help me to hold onto moments that allow me to see situations for what they are. 

 My biggest take away this year is trusting myself. Trusting that when I came to Arizona I would find a job. Trusting that I will meet people that will guide me to new opportunities. Trusting that I will advocate for myself when something is not right. I have had so many examples of times where I could have listened to other people and at the end of the day made a different decision. I have had to learn that I need to sit in my feelings and listen to that little voice in the back of my head before running to others for a second opinion. The voice that may seem quieter than the others but is the most confident, the most calm, the most unwavering. It’s important to realize that the loudest voice is not always the truest voice.

There have also been many times where I have ignored this voice because my intentions were in the way. I think that’s the hardest part of trusting yourself. You have to let go of these intentions and expectations in order to be protected from something that you can’t see yet. You hear that little voice in your head but ignore the message because you hope for the desired outcome; whether it is a person, a job, a new apartment, anything really. Until suddenly, you realize the voice is screaming, screaming for you to make a change. The reality with making a change, however, is that we have to be okay with losing things while simultaneously not losing ourselves. In the words of Mama C, you can give people pieces of yourself but you can’t be upset when you never get that piece back. I have learned this year that the issue with having good intentions is that you expect others to have the same, and when they don’t it feels like you are losing the idea of something that was never meant to be. But I am practicing being so secure within myself, that the love that I give you is yours, because I already have enough for me. 

It’s important to think back on all of the things that we thought we’d never survive. Going through your first real loss, your first heartbreak, not receiving your dream job and acknowledging that you have survived all of your worst days. I had a moment a couple months ago where I said to a friend “I just don’t feel like I’m getting over it.” She said something back to me that really stuck, “you’re doing it everyday. Everyday that you just get through the day, you’re doing it.” The same went for when I didn’t feel as if I had a purpose in Arizona. Everyday that I made it out there, everyday that I paid my bills and made friends and took care of myself, I was doing it. All of our feelings are temporary, it is important to feel and acknowledge the hard feelings but let them pass by knowing that they won’t last forever. 

I want to end this with saying that I’m so proud of anyone who survived things this year that they didn’t think they would. I’m so proud that you trusted yourself and made it through the hard days. I’m proud of the days you took just taking care of yourself and the days that you took taking care of other people despite fighting your own battles. There are so many kinds of hard. There is the hard that we didn’t choose and there is the hard that we did, but it is important be able to bend but not break. I am proud of any one whose outcomes looked different from their intentions but they embraced the lessons in each season. I realized that this year went exactly how it was supposed to. I am so grateful for the moments where I felt like I was losing something that turned out to be protection from things I couldn’t see coming at the time. I am grateful for the opportunities that didn’t work that made room for the opportunities that were meant to work. And I am grateful for the year of being uncomfortable that gave me the lessons to create, grow and heal. This next year will welcome growth, detachment from codependency and embracing the calm, inner knowing. Lezzzget it, 2022.