When I heard this while floating in the sky in a metal tube, I pondered which side of that war I’m on. I vacillate depending on who I am around, circumstances, and my internal emotional state. Up there in the air, I was on an emotional high too. I was in the “believing in magic”
half Anna describes. I was scared I’d move into the “things will never work out” half once I landed.
When I left LA I was feeling particularly expansive in my life and relationships at the end of 2021. But planes don’t stay in the air forever – I too needed to land – and luckily for me nothing grounds me down to earth like returning to where I’m from with the people who made me.As expected, family time was a soup of regressing into old versions of myself, lingering old drama, new realities of aging, heaviness, tenderness, coldness – all with a side of bright moments when I was present enough to notice them. Coming down a couple notches into realism was healthy for me, although I resisted losing the expanded, magical, optimism high I was feeling while buckled in my aisle seat watching Beginners.
This week on the plane to Michigan, I wasn’t as emotionally high. I left LA a bit sad and low and disillusioned. I thought that perhaps the fall down to earth in the midwest would be easier…it wasn’t. However, these days I more easily bounce when I fall down emotionally. There’s less of a crash because I have a bigger sample size to know I’ll always come up again, it just takes time. Back in my own time zone, space, routines, and autonomy, I already feel more myself. I felt a bit tender at first – I didn't see any friends for a few days – but yesterday I did.
And after talking to others about their complexity in family dynamics, I’m reminded that even when circumstances are vastly different there’s often an overlap in feelings – versions of feeling behind, misunderstood, lonely, or comparing one’s own situation to those of others. I get sturdier every year, making my emotions less fickle. I can be joyful and go share joy even if it depletes my supply a little because I can always replenish. As Richard Rohr says, “Joy can't be sustained unless you consciously give it away."
I’m trying to trust that feelings move through me if I let them, without resisting. When uncomfortable emotions come, eventually they’ll go and inevitably joyful ones will come around again. And that cycle is the magic I believe in.
Which side I'm on depends on the day for me.
I wish all of us a new year of more days on the side of magic than not.
Last year based on this plane ride viewing I made myself a New Year’s Eve journaling prompt…
-What helps you stay on the side of believing in magic?
-How can you do those things more this year?
Here are a few more journaling prompts aka good questions to talk to your intuition through…
BACK QUESTIONS:
What do you regret this year?
Who did you invest in this year?
Where did you invest in?
What was fun this year?
What resources did you use this year?
Where do you feel most resourced?
Where do you feel depleted?
FORWARD QUESTIONS:
Where do you want to move towards?
Where do you want to move away from?
Who do you want to invest in more?
How do you want to feel?
What color do you want to feel for this year?
Where do you want your focus to pool?
If you want more of where this came from, I have a workshop called Resolutions Reframe
that I’ve been teaching since 2017. It used to be a live workshop at Kripalu and now you can do it here anytime! Perhaps tonight? Or tomorrow? Or whenever? The workshop is the process that works for me. The recipe vaguely looks like: reflecting on the past year and taking inventory of what's working and what isn’t to get a clear picture of what’s been holding you back. Then we determine step by step what to let go of and, with the new space created, we start to figure out a focus for 2023 in each of 8 life areas I made up. I don’t know what I’m thinking or feeling unless I’m writing so this practice has been my most consistent and useful method of understanding my inner weather, relationship dynamics, and prioritization to keep moving in the direction of progress over stagnation.
Email me if you have any questions or if you want to try it, more information here. Discount code: twentytwo
**And if there’s enough interest I’d be happy to offer this in person in LA as a workshop and or on zoom live, so if you’d rather participate that way, also email me.
Happy New Year! Let's not believe my superstition about odd numbered years.
Love,
Katie
PS. -Timely song, have you listened to the podcast ep about this song?-Another song for now right now. -This year I watched this on the plane…there won't be a newsletter ode to it that's for sure but it was wild to think about the early pandemic and how that time felt. -Beginners was a much better plane choice and soon when I got back to LA I love his most recent film, last year’s C'mon, C'mon and listening to him talk about it here and here. I particularly loved this part:
“Entering a new year with no dreams of newness. With no plan for fixing what’s wrong with you or attaining what’s been out of your reach. With nothing to slough off except the wish to fit in. With, instead, acceptance of the unacceptable.”
