Dear 2019, This Is What I Ask of You

A letter of intention and appeal

Jan 01, 2019

Dreams Resolutions Goals Self-Improvement
person holding calendar

Photo by Brooke Lark

Hello 2019. Hope you are doing well. I am deeply grateful to see you and begin our journey together. 2018 was a year I was ready to say goodbye to, though it had its beautiful moments and was full of many blessings. So here we are, meeting each other for the very first time. We have so much to learn from each other.

I should warn you — I have mixed emotions every year on January 1st. I am filled with dread, awe, resentment, guilt, excitement, and anticipation. I wish I could look at you as a fully blank slate, which you technically are, but I have a habit of bringing in things from past years into a new one. With that said, there are things I undoubtedly will expect from you and plenty of things I will project onto you. Hopes, dreams, goals, and desires. I know that is a lot of pressure to place on you, a single year. But alas, old habits die hard. And I’m not the only perpetrator of this custom.

I hope you know I have good intentions, and even better mantras. I always do, on January 1st. And I will pull my weight, do my part, I promise. Of course, it goes without saying that I hope you do your part. ‘What is that?’ you may ask. Let me tell you.

Hold space. Hold space for my highest good and truest self to manifest, fully. Be spacious enough to let me spread my wings and yet compact enough to cradle me in times I am feeling inadequate.

Believe. Believe in me the way a sparrow believes in her offspring’s ability to fly when she pushes them out of the nest. Believe that I can bring forth the good work that lives inside of me and find the places in the world that need it. Believe it when I say you are my year, the one in which I will commit myself to progress.

Send the troops. When I find myself in a tunnel, unable to see the light through any pores, and I begin the brutal act of self-sabotage — send me anyone or anything that can pull me out of it. Let it come in the form of mentors, animals, angels, fairy dust, I have no preference. But let it be full of light and love, whatever it is.

Remind me. When I have forgotten how to shine, remind me that the sun never vanishes, even if the clouds are blocking her rays. When I have lost my way, remind me that I have not lost the footsteps I have already marked. When words simply won’t come, remind me that they too, need rest every once in a while, and that better ones are coming. And should I ever forget that love is my aim, remind me how I operate in the world without it.

2019, that is all I ask of you.

With much love,

Yours in anticipation