The Year of Permission

Hello lovely friends,

I hope this year has started out for you in the bestest, most magical, most wonderful way possible.

I have made a really profound promise to myself for this year ahead. 

I'm not calling it a 'resolution' because... meh, the idea of resolutions just don't sit right with me anymore. 

Maybe because I always feel like there is so much pressure around resolutions every year. They kind of feel rigid and uncomfortably firm like wearing an ill fitting pair of pants to the Christmas table.

I have promised myself that this year I have permission.

Permission for what you might be asking?

Well, hear me out.

I think that life is literally a big ol' canvas for us to scribble on. To make mistakes and learn and change direction and vision and to purge ideas over again and again until our very last breath. 

And yet I feel like too often we tie ourselves up in sel imposed ideals of what we should be, what we should believe or how we should feel.

Sometimes we naively set our sights on some kind of imaginary triumphant finish line we need to reach, whether it be with raising kids or achieving something at work or kicking some kind of goal and we end up missing all of the magic we pass along our way to that elusive line. 

It has taken me fifty years to figure out that life is actually designed for us to get lost in and to experience ALL of those extraordinary highs and  lows and moments in between.

THIS year I have given myself an open ended permission slip.

I've given myself permission to learn new things and to occasionally completely stuff things up.

I have permission to change my mind when I choose to, to smash old self imposed boundaries and I have  permission to set new ones... or not.

I have given myself permission to say yes... AND no, and to walk away if something doesn't feel right for me or run as awkwardly as I possibly can towards something that does.

I have given myself permission to stand up for myself if I need to to, to speak my truth, cry out out loud and to laugh out loud even louder.

I have permission to stop racing through every day, permission to slow down and take my time and go gently and take as long as I need or want to get to any kind of finish line. 

In fact, I've given myself permission to purposely dance in the opposite direction to the finish line just because... I CAN.

I hope you will give YOURSELF permission this year too. I really do... in whatever that may be and I truly hope that you will dance with me through 2024.

xx Sonia