What do you think the most popular New Year’s resolutions are?
I bet you guessed right:
1. Exercise more
2. Lose weight
I used to wake up with these resolutions (for me, number one was simply in service to number two) every single day of my life, thinking something like:
“Today will be the day! I will eat less calories/carbs/sugar/food and transform into a skinnier version of myself, therefore a more shiny, happy, perfect person. Then my life can really begin.”
This is the lie that diet culture feeds us. We’re not at fault for believing it. It’s deeply, profoundly embedded into our culture, like the air we breathe.
Anyway! I spent and lost a lot of years in the thick fog of an eating disorder. Eating disorders are like Groundhog Day. Every morning, I woke up with a firm resolution to diet harder and better. Most days, I broke my own promise to myself. This is not a very fun way to live, which is a huge understatement.
According to U.S. News, 80% of people give up on their New Year’s resolutions by the second week in February. I know this dance of making promises to myself, then breaking them, then feeling awful. Rinse and repeat. I don’t want to dance anymore. No thank you.
In November, I celebrated nine years in recovery from my eating disorder, which I like to think of as nine years without using food as a weapon against myself. I have a 12-step program to thank for my life, really. (Living with an eating disorder is no kind of life.) Anyway, I could write a book about that journey. Maybe I will! In the meantime, I’ll share some of the anti-resolution things I try to do every day, wholeheartedly but completely imperfectly. I think of pointing myself in this general direction. I am bound to get off-track, but then I can reroute again:
1. I don’t try to fix myself. I reject that old idea that I am fundamentally broken or flawed. We are all doing our best, especially during the crazy year we just survived.
2. I seek self-kindness and compassion, not self-control.
3. I try to be of service, to take a small action of kindness for someone besides myself.
4. I spend time with people I love (or new people, here’s hoping, in the after times.) This pandemic year has made me understand how much I crave connection. I’ve also heard that connection is the opposite of addiction.
5. I ask for help! This is hard one for me, but we all need help. Especially new parents! I am practicing this.
6. Spread love, it’s the Brooklyn way…
I guess Biggie’s song was sort of about anti-resolutions: “You know very well/ Who you are/ Don't let 'em hold you down/ Reach for the stars…”
I may not be into resolutions, but I’m reaching for the stars this year. There are a lot of things I want, but they start with experiencing the things right here in front of me: the juicy book I’m reading, my husband’s hand in mine, Simone’s first teeth sprouting, a hot coffee on a cold morning, a friend’s voice on the phone. That’s one of my big recovery revelations, that real life is here and now, not some future me who lives in a future body.
I’m ready for change, fireworks and love this year. I want to keep growing. I want to finish the city of London puzzle I started before heading home to New York in two weeks. I want to be present for the rest of Simone’s babyhood. Isn’t it crazy that she’s already crawling? I want my new book, PLENTY, to find its readers. (It comes out in September, a nice birthday gift.) I want so much.
I want for the world to be a safer, warmer place.
I want to hug my friends again.
I want to travel.
I want you to have a year of joy, love, health and gigantic dreams coming true.
Happy 2021!