New Year, Same ME

New Year’s Eve Edition

Every December, people start yelling the same thing:

New year, new me.

We repeat this every year without ever asking the most important question: How can you become someone new if you don’t even know who you are yet?

And for a long time, I believed that was the goal.

To become new.

To erase the old.

To start over from scratch.

But this year, that didn’t sit right with me.

I don’t want to become someone new.

I want to remember who I was before the world started telling me who to be.

Before family shaped my identity.

Before survival shaped my decisions.

Before culture shaped my expectations.

Before religion shaped my guilt.

Before the inner critic shaped my worth.

Before trauma shaped my voice.

I don’t need a new me.

I need a whole me.

A remembered me.

A me I abandoned without even realizing it.

This year isn’t about erasing my life.

It’s about remixing it with truth so I can remember myself clearly.

The You Before the World

There is a version of you that existed long before pain, pressure, and performance took over.

A version that was honest.

A version that was curious.

A version that wasn’t afraid to feel.

A version that didn’t shrink.

A version that wasn’t busy surviving.

Somewhere along the way, life asked us to adjust.

To change.

To fold.

To mask.

To behave.

To cope.

To quiet ourselves.

To become who everyone else needed instead of who we really were.

And because we were young, we didn’t know we were losing ourselves.

No one tells you that losing yourself doesn’t happen in a single moment.

It happens slowly.

Quietly.

Through a thousand tiny compromises in childhood and adulthood.

By the time we realize it, we’re grown and far away from our original self.

Tonight is about going back for her.

Not to relive the past.

But to remix it with compassion and remember what was never lost.

Becoming Whole, Not New

Healing isn’t about fixing something broken.

Because you were never broken.

You were shaped.

You were conditioned.

You were wounded.

You were misinformed.

But you were never ruined.

Real healing is about remembering.

Re-membering.

Putting back the parts of yourself you disconnected from in order to survive.

Healing is the journey of returning to:

the person who dreamedthe person who felt deeply

the person who imagined freely

the person who didn’t apologize for existing

the person who believed in possibility

the person who had a voice

This is what it means to remix your life.

Not to deny what happened.But to tell the story differently.

With truth.

With context.

With grace.

You don’t need a new personality.

You need permission to return to your original one.

Wholeness is not reinvention.

Wholeness is reunion.

New Year, Same Me

This New Year’s Eve, I’m not starting over.

I’m not forcing change.

I’m not chasing a version of myself that doesn’t belong to me.

I’m coming home.

I am returning to myself.

I am remembering myself.

I am choosing wholeness over reinvention.

The me I need isn’t new.

She’s layered.

She’s buried.

She’s waiting to be uncovered.

She is the me before shame.

The me before guilt.

The me before survival mode.

The me before I learned to shrink.

And tonight, I’m giving myself permission to meet her again.

To honor her.

To trust her.

To rise with her.

New Year, Same Me.

Just finally whole.

A Closing Reflection

Instead of making New Year goals I won’t remember by February, I stopped doing resolutions a long time ago. I started choosing a word. A value. Something I wanted to embody in how I live, not just what I accomplish.

I’ve lived through seasons of being obedient, disciplined, and most importantly, authentic. I’m grateful I started with being authentic, because it became the foundation for everything that followed. When you’re honest with yourself, the rest has somewhere solid to land.

This year, my word was intentional. And I truly lived it. I was intentional with my healing, my choices, my work, my rest, my truth. Because of that, I can look back on my life with gratitude for all of it. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

As I reflect on my life, I feel called toward a new word for the season ahead. Liberation.

Liberation in how I live.

Liberation in what I consume.

Liberation in how I care for my body, my mind, and my spirit.

Liberation in choosing myself without guilt.

This is why I say sometimes we don’t need to change to grow. We just need to remix what we’ve been doing and become more intentional about how we live this thing called life.

And that’s the work.

A New Year’s Reflection

Ask yourself:

Who was I before the world told me who to be? What truth about me have I been afraid to remember? And how can I remix my life in a way that brings me back to myself in this new season?

Sit with those questions without judgment.Let them pull you closer to the version of you that still exists underneath it all.

Tonight isn’t about becoming someone else.

Tonight is about coming back home to you.

New Year. Same me. Remembered. Whole.