Annual Review: 2021

My 2021 was... unconventional, to say the least.

I embraced my identity as a full-time digital nomad. As a result, my year looked like this:

January: NYC

February-March: Mexico

April-May-June: Guatemala

July-August: New York City

September: Mexico + Colombia

October-November-December: Tel Aviv, Israel

I never planned for my life to be this way, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Every chapter brought its own challenges, lessons, and growths. There were periods when I thrived and was on top of the world, surrounded by people I loved and who loved me back. There were periods when I suffered from depression and hopelessness, when I thought my overwhelming feelings of aloneness would swallow me whole.

Some months, my business thrived and I felt unstoppable. Other months, it was quiet and I had anxiety about my future. I made incredible new friends, learned so much about myself, confronted old demons and discovered some new ones, explored the world, explored my mind, let go of shit I had been carrying for 25 years, experimented with some things (NSFW, let’s leave it at that), dug deep both in therapy and outside of it, cried sometimes, and laughed till my belly hurt. I dove deep into my traumas and began the never ending process of reprogramming my brain.

I learned that home is not a place, but rather something you can bring with you from place to place, that stability is not an external force but rather the mental and emotional strength I create within myself. I learned not to hold on to things, or to people, and that attachment doesn’t serve me. We own nothing and no one in this world. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we find peace.

I learned to tune into my gut feelings and intuition, filled 3 journals worth of my thoughts, and embraced and enjoyed my own company.

I learned that home is not a place, but rather something you can bring with you from place to place, that stability is not an external force but rather the mental and emotional strength we create within ourselves.

I changed my mentality. I healed old wounds. I created new ones, too, and I learned how to be okay with all of them, the fresh ones and those that had already scabbed over. That’s how life works. You get hurt, and then hopefully, you heal a bit (or a lot). The pain softens. The faster you release your self-judgement, the quicker you find healing.

One theme that keeps popping up here is “learning,” and that’s something I’m proud of. If I can say one thing about this year, it’s that I never stopped learning.

Last year, my word of the year was “trust.” I began to build self-trust, trust in the world, in the universe, in the people I surrounded myself with. Travelling helped me with that, forcing me to be open to outside influences and place my trust in other people and external forces, and most of all in myself. It was tenuous at first, and incredibly scary, but it showed me that I had nothing to fear. My trust was rarely violated, and when it was, it wasn't irreparable - I could always count on myself to fix it. My intuition was good. Mostly, I realized, people were looking to be kind and the universe was good to me.

I realized that closing my doors had made me miss out on so much, and by opening them, I could experience the world more fully and express myself and my gifts. It was a beautiful lesson and I gained so much from practicing the art of trust.

This year, my word is “fearlessness.” My practice of trust made me realize that the opposite of trust is fear, and that's where my inability to trust came from. There was so much fear. I came to understand that I carry fear around many things in my life and that it holds me back from doing the things I want to do.

When I look my fear square in the eye, though, I see that it's made of lies: that I’m not deserving, that I’m less than, that I’m not on par with everyone else.

This year, I’m knocking down the straw house of fear. The beliefs it feeds me are not real, and I won’t let them control me. Now, I’m focusing on freeing myself and not letting fear hold me back from living at 100% power. I'm dismantling the illusion piece by piece, because it holds no weight once I test the myths is tells me. I watch them fall apart as I do the things the fear told me I couldn't, because those untruths don't hold up to the simple, clear-cut reality - that I'm capable of doing all the things it had convinced me I wasn't worthy or capable of.

What I'm most proud of is that I kept moving forward, that I grew through it all, that I turned triggers into teachers and didn't run away when faced with fear and difficulty.

At the end of this year, I am grateful. To the people I’ve been with (you know who you are. You mean everything to me), to the places I’ve travelled, to my therapist, to my clients, my family.

Most of all, I’m grateful to myself for my bravery, my resilience, my independent thinking and my fire. It's been a year of so much goodness and blessing, and also lots of hardship and challenge. What I'm most proud of is that I kept moving forward, that I grew through it all, that I turned triggers into teachers and didn't run away when faced with fear and difficulty. I worked through the things that came up, practiced flexibility and openness, and allowed things to change me. I'm a better, stronger person for it. I didn't give up when things got hard, and now, I'm reaping the rewards: growth, self-acceptance, wisdom, strength, openness, self-trust.

I think this is the core of inner child work: becoming who you needed when you were younger, protecting and caring for yourself as an adult, and being your own best friend.

Now, we head into a new year with an open mind, open heart, a spirit of adventure and a commitment to keep growing, healing, learning and living.

Remember:

You can be stronger than fear.

Trust yourself.

Live fully.

Cheers to another year!