on witnessing each other

why are we here if not for each other

Happy new year! All the clichés are true — time really does just move faster when you get older (I say at 23). I know not everyone loves setting goals but god do I love a structured pinpoint to look back and pause for a second to see how I want to make my next step. So many big dreams are conjured here, and that feels special.

A lot has happened this past year, more than I realized until I scrolled back through my camera roll. I hit my one year anniversary at my first job postgrad, with climbing and with my sweet H. I traveled to Italy, Houston, Chicago, and Seattle. I tried therapy again. I got bed bugs. I moved apartments. I got into coffee. I felt anxious (both caffeine and internally induced). I felt loved. I felt apathetic. I felt a lot of shame. And I felt joy in connecting back to myself and others.

I don’t have a clear direction or voice with this newsletter but I thought I would share a few of my hopes for this upcoming year (the year of the dragon, my year!) and I hope some of this hope extends to you.

I already mapped out all the things I want to DO in different sectors: health, finance, creativity, personal development, social, career and miscellaneous. I’m a slut for lists and having some sense of direction, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t buzzing with the shininess of a “fresh start.” A few things in each category if you fancy:

Health:

• Find an Asian therapist I really connect with

• Deadlift 150 pounds by the end of the year

Creativity:

• Read 2 books each month

• 1 vlog each month (visual diaries to come)

Social:

• 1 self date each month

• Host 1 supper party each month

Career:

• Potentially find freelance work?

• Explore other areas of work I’d be interested in

Personal development:

• Build towards secure attachment + create strong coping skills for anxiety

• Get in touch with Chinese culture and language

Misc:

• Learn how to swim

• Take a dance class with the girls

• Go outdoor climbing

Honestly the things I want to DO are way less interesting to me than how I want to FEEL in the new year. I went to Batch Craft Beer & Kolaches with two of my friends as December came to a close. A cute family-owned bakery and brewery that had cute red and bright blue diner-esque chairs on the inside and a large outdoor beer garden with wooden benches. We wrapped ourselves in coats and sat outside in the cold to dream. This is a bright spot of girlhood. Sitting with your friends gabbing about all the things you’re excited to grow into and the beauty of witnessing each other.

My friend posted a TikTok to their story that said, “My favorite part of healing is when I stop lying to myself and start accepting people for who they are instead of whatever potential I projected onto them.”

It reminded me of this article I return to a lot, “Process-centered love: Dismantling capitalist logic in our relationships.” I’ve probably mentioned it on here before but my brain can’t hold anything without a record so let me monologue about it again to you! Because repetition is care and care is practice.

Capitalism holds us in a vice grip on the “promise of the future satisfaction of desire…just over the horizon.” This logic translates to our most intimate relationships. How other people will satisfy our desires, fill in the gaps and loss we’ve been carrying. “We can often get so caught up in the fantasies of our future lives, and the obsession with trying to make others fit into that prefabricated mold, that we miss the reality of one another entirely.”

My hands are red in this. I’ve seen patterns of trying to control the people I love around me to fit my expectations of what I want for myself, instead of centering curiosity and openness of who they are and who they are becoming. Making a narrative out of their actions and making it personal instead of taking the time to learn the language of this person I love. I’m allowed my own feelings and to ask for more communication or changes in action of course, but it takes compassion to learn how people operate when it’s uncomfortable for you.

This past year, I kept seeing the word ease pop up in my brain and in my journaling, and it’s because I felt a lot of anxiety. I asked a lot of, “Should I…can I…do you mind if I…” I spent a stupid amount of time subconsciously molding myself to different people rather than settling into the ease of just being myself. It translated into a lot of social anxiety, retreating and unhealthy rumination on whether I was a funny, smart, interesting person. And that also meant being critical of other people in the same way — how can you accept others when you can’t accept yourself? (Another cliché, yes yes)

“When we find ourselves connected to and in community with people we love and we refuse to let ourselves get tangled up in expecting and enforcing outcomes, we can truly revel in the best part of relationships: witnessing each other.”

On December 26, I journaled that I wanted to lean into the strengths that make me who I am outside of any other person’s gaze. My creative eye for beauty, my deep sensitivity, my capacity for empathy and holding space for others and my silliness. People pleasing, out with it I say! On the flip side, I wanted to let go of this internalized need to be funny/witty, a narrow definition of intelligence and the perception of being cool and easygoing. I’ll leave the jokes and stoicism to the real pros, and love that it comes naturally for them.

I closed out the year on New Years Eve with a group of my friends, sitting on the wooden floor of my tiny studio apartment, clipping words and pictures out of National Geographic and Architectural Digest. I ended up cutting out “Connecting to care; slowly but surely; it’s such a beautiful place to be; planting a seed.”

It was a wholesome end to the year. We ran up to the rooftop of my apartment’s parking garage (I already tipsy on prosecco) to count down to the new year holding red solo cops filled with champagne. We cheered and hugged, amongst other strangers who also came up to watch the display of fireworks across the city skyline. It’s a beautiful thing, the optimism of the human spirit to dream and believe that you are capable of creating the life you want and that we don’t do it alone. Dream on!

With that, I hope you have a beautiful year ahead — I can’t wait to witness all of it.