Does January feel heavier than it's supposed to?
There's no award for bouncing back on schedule. No gold star for having your vision board ready or your word of the year picked out. Some people hold it all together with coffee and sheer stubbornness, wondering how everyone else seems to have moved on while others are still trying to remember what day it is.
That's not weakness. That's grief doing exactly what grief does.
January has a cruel talent for amplifying absence. The holiday distractions are gone. The house is too quiet. And you're left staring at a whole year stretched out in front of you - 365 days of figuring out how to do life without them.
Everyone else is posting about fresh starts and new beginnings. Setting goals. Making plans. Talking about their best year yet.
And you're over here thinking, "I just need to make it through February."
Here's what no one says out loud enough: you can be grateful for a new year and also dread it. You can want to move forward and still feel stuck. You can show up for your life and simultaneously wonder how you're supposed to do this for another twelve months.
None of that means you're doing it wrong.
It just means you loved deeply. And that love doesn't disappear just because the calendar flipped.
Grief is not a sign you're failing at life or that you need to try harder. It's evidence that someone mattered. That something real existed. And the sacred is not standing there with a stopwatch, waiting for you to hurry up and heal already.
Some years, the fresh start is not about reinvention. It's about survival. About waking up and choosing to keep going even when you're not sure why. About doing the next thing because it's the next thing, not because you have some grand plan.
That's not settling. That's courage.
You are allowed to ignore the productivity posts. You are allowed to skip goal-setting if it feels pointless right now. You're allowed to have zero vision for the year ahead except "try not to cry at work." That is completely acceptable human behavior.
And listen...if all you managed this week was getting out of bed and making it through the days, even if half of them were fueled by spite and chocolate, you can still count that as a win.
Progress doesn't always look like forward momentum. Sometimes it looks like staying upright. Sometimes it looks like still being here.
So take January at your own pace. Log off if the fresh-start energy feels exhausting. Say no to things that feel too hard. Let yourself miss them without apologizing for it.
You don't have to carry this year perfectly. You just have to carry it honestly.
And if you find yourself having a good moment and then feeling guilty about it? You don't need to. Joy isn't betrayal. It's proof that love is still doing its work in you, even in the middle of loss.
If you're navigating this new year with grief that won't quit, you don't have to do it alone.
I have space for 2 new clients this month. After that, I'll be taking a break through Lent (February 17 - April 6) for my own time of reflection and renewal.
EMBody Wisdom holds space for you in the messy middle - where you don't have to explain yourself or pretend you're more okay than you are.
If you need support, reach out.
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