Reflecting on 2019

**This is kind of a long one. Stick with me though, it's worth it!

I don’t do well during this week between Christmas and New Year’s. I never have. This space, this space that you don’t know what day it is, what time it is, or what you should be doing is way too much unstructured time for me. If you know me well, you know that unstructured time and me don’t really mix. Each year, I try to make it a productive, reflective time, and each year, I find something wrong with it, or me, or the past year, or usually all three.

This time is a time of great reflection for me. It has been for a few years now. I go back through old journals, I do a lot of thinking, I make a lot of lists and a lot of goals. I sit in these mixed-up feelings of failure and optimism, disappointment and hope. I look back on the year and dissect all of my mistakes and all the things that didn’t go right. It turns into this prolonged period of beating myself up about an assortment of real and imagined reasons. In summary, this week just really sucks for me in my brain.

As I’ve sat here in all my free time, I’ve been thinking about this cycle I’ve been in quite a bit. This new self-awareness that I’ve been gifted with has allowed me to step back and look at my actions and what comes from them. As I’ve stepped back and looked at this “reflection” process, I can now see how counterproductive it truly is. I spend the end of most days running through all my failures and studying my inadequacies obsessively. I replay conversations in my head and all the things I should have said instead. I break down all my food exchanges for the day and whether or not I met them. My perfectionism runs wild and totally takes over my life in these moments. In the past, I’ve found it nearly impossible to see any of the good things about my day, my actions, or myself in general. This process becomes magnified in these days leading up to a new year.

My treatment team knows this about me, and they often encourage me to pinpoint good things that I have done. Anything and everything that is going right, big or small, instead of all the things that are going wrong. I’m no stranger to this process. At treatment, we would start each day with intentions and end each day with wins. I got away from this when I got home, but am now realizing that it’s something that would be very valuable to add back into my daily reflections. Instead of focusing on all the bad and the things that went wrong, even on the really bad days, identifying a win really does wonders in changing your perspective. That’s what I’m going to attempt to do in this blog post. Instead of focusing on all my shortcomings for the year, I’m going to take some time to reflect on all the good things and the growth I’ve made.

On December 31, 2018, I posted my intention list for 2019. My goals, my hopes, and my dreams for the coming year. Coming into 2019, I honestly felt like the worst was behind me. I was riding the treatment high and honestly thought I had slain the “ED giant” that had taken up occupancy in my brain. I was feeling optimistic and hopeful about what was to come. I was in a different headspace than I ever had been. As I’ve gone back to this list throughout the year, I've consistently felt as though I were failing. But opening it up tonight and taking a step back to look at the bigger picture, I feel like maybe I didn’t fail as profoundly as I first thought. Maybe, just maybe, I achieved more this year than I previously gave myself credit for.

• Seek joy

• Truly live. No regrets. No apologies.

• Be authentic. Be genuine. Be real.

• Don’t be afraid of letting people in-it’s worth it.

• TRUST myself.

• Give myself grace

• Self care-my body is resilient. I am real and imperfect and ok.

• Do what makes me feel scared. Anxiety and excitement feel the same.

• Make room. For people, for experiences, for love.

That’s quite the list, huh? I feel the same. I look at it and it honestly makes me smile because I remember the high I was on when I created it. How truly excited and genuinely hopeful I was when I wrote it. I WANTED all those things. I was going to go and get those things! Maybe some of the enthusiasm has worn off, but as I look at these things and remember the December airplane ride where they were written, I really love the girl who wrote them. And that’s big for me, because I don’t often feel like that about myself. That girl was so passionate and full of hope and determined to make her life better. I wish I could be that girl more consistently. In any case, I’m excited to re-share this list with you and reflect on the progress I’ve made in 2019.

• Seek JOY

This phrase is tattooed on my left foot. I look at it every day. For awhile, I feel like it kind of lost its meaning and became something that was just there. But it’s such a profound statement for me. I used to think that happy and joy were synonymous. Now, I don’t think so. I think that happy is an emotion that is often fleeting, and I think that joy is more long-lived. I think that for me, in this season, joy will come with peace, contentment, and purpose. Three things that I’m still chasing honestly. But finding that thing that truly sets my soul on fire and pursuing it, that’s what I want. I want to find my place and my true purpose, and I’m going to keep looking. Because it’s out there, even though I try to talk myself out of that fact often.

• Truly live. No regrets. No apologies.

Ha. Well, this one makes me laugh a little because there are times it feels so damn far away. Isn’t that the exact opposite of what my life has been? A life full of rerunning all my mistakes in my head and could of's and would of’s and should of’s. You know what? I think that although I have a LONG WAY to go in this department, I’ve been taking baby steps. Telling people how I truly feel comes to mind. Traveling to the places that I want to go, because it makes my heart happy. Being transparent, writing how I truly feel, and then posting it for the world to see. And maybe even some of my recent carpool karaokes (one & two), something that I would NEVER have done a year ago. No regrets for posting my horrible singing out there for everyone to see. No apologies for being silly or for being myself. Just living in the moment. Again, baby steps.

• Be authentic. Be genuine. Be real.

This blog has been a huge step in this direction. Again, I still have growth I need to make, don’t get me wrong, but I think I’ve been moving in the right direction. It’s been revealed to me again and again how powerful sharing my story can be. Just being me, not sugarcoating things or telling little white lies that make everything look better than it is. There’s so much power in being honest with your story and your struggles, because it not only gives others permission to share their stories, but it also sheds light on the darkness that secrets shroud over your life. My vulnerability has afforded me new connections and relationships with people that I never would have been able to forge if I hadn’t allowed them to see a real part of me. That’s my favorite thing about this blog. Hearing or reading the words, “I can relate to you when you said…” I’m still working on this in real-time, in real-life interactions and not just through writing. I’m going to keep working on it, because I’ve had a glimpse of what it’s truly like to be unapologetically me, and I think I like it. And this summer, I was pleasantly surprised to find that others actually like it too.

• Don’t be afraid of letting people in-it’s worth it

I love this one. I love reflecting on it because it is one area that I really can see huge growth in this past year. I walked back into treatment to a group of strangers that I essentially felt were living in my me and my friends' “house” from before. It was truly a surreal feeling. But the relationships I was able to make with my fellow patients and the staff at the Ranch are indescribable. I truly let people in, some of them that I knew that I was going to have let go in 45 days. I have never given my heart so freely as I did this summer, and I have never known as great of love, connection, and joy. This summer was truly a gift, for so many reasons, but it really opened my eyes to the power of human connection and authenticity and vulnerability and how profound those things can be in my life. Coming home, I’ve been able to deepen existing relationships and forge new ones, something that I’ve had a really difficult time doing in the past. This has probably been one of my biggest areas of growth in this past year.

• Trust myself.

This one’s a doozy. Trust was my One Word goal for 2018 and boy, was it hard. Even though I feel like I made leeway at the end of last year, (you can read about it HERE) I feel like this is one that I still really struggle with. Everything from trusting that my body will know what to do with the food that I consume, to trusting my judgment when it comes to the people that I invite into my life, or just trusting in my future and that I won’t do something stupid that ruins it all. Trust is hard. Trusting myself is even harder. One big win for me this year in this area was returning to treatment. From the outside, I looked ok. From the outside, I didn’t look like I needed to spend all summer in treatment. But on the inside, I knew where things were headed if I didn’t do something. I had a lot of people disapprove of my decision whether it was in their looks, comments, or overall attitude toward my return to Arizona. But going back was the epitome of trusting myself and giving myself what I needed, something that no one could have done for me, but me. I have such a long way to go with this one, it’s a daily struggle, but the wins this year were substantial and that gives me hope that someday my body, my brain, and my soul can all be on the same page.

• Give myself grace.

Ah. Grace. That was going to be my One Word for 2020. Maybe it still should be and I should reassess. We shall see. This one has been tough. You see, I’m really good at affording others grace. I’m usually understanding and supportive. I’m pretty patient and forgiving. All important things in the grace-giving department. The problem is, I’m bad at giving myself any of those things. I’m slowly learning. I’ve had slip-ups here and there, but the longer I stick with this recovery thing, the more and more I’m learning that it isn’t linear and no one journey looks the same. I’m extraordinarily tough on myself. You read that above. You know what, though? Writing this blog post, choosing to see the good things, I think that’s a pretty good example of grace in and of itself. Having the self-awareness to understand that as hard as I try, my recovery journey won’t be perfect because there’s no such thing, is another grace piece that I’m trying to practice. Small steps, but steps in the right direction.

• Self-care. My body is resilient.

I wrote a whole blog post on this HERE. Of course, that post was all about going back to treatment without saying those specific words, but still. There were a lot of good truth nuggets in there. Like I said in that post, self-care to me used to mean mani/pedis and massages and getting your hair done and all the things that I really don’t like doing. So I hated when people talked about self-care. But now, I’m realizing that self-care can look a lot of ways. It’s not working out when my body is injured, sick, or too tired even though the ED voice in my brain tells me that I should. It’s eating all my exchanges and sticking to my meal plan. It’s keeping all my appointments and asking for help when I need it. It’s reaching out and texting someone when I feel alone instead of just wallowing in it. It’s taking a nap when I have the chance. It’s doing things that make me happy, going on trips to see my people, and putting myself first. It’s setting boundaries. All of those things I’ve been working on this past year. Self-care will continue to look different depending on the stage of life that I’m in, but right now, give me my quiet house with cuddles on the couch with Rocky and I’ll take it.

• Do what makes me feel scared. Anxiety and excitement feel the same.

I like this one. These are some of the words my therapist spoke to me during our goodbye last December and they have stuck with me ever since. This one is one of my favorites, but it also happens to be the one that I think that I’m the worst at. I care way too much about what others think about me. I’m really self-conscious and unconfident. I don’t particularly like change and as a result, my life is very rigid and routined. This year, I have some hopes and dreams that will hopefully catapult me in the right direction. I’ve lived too much of my life under rules and expectations that I set for myself. I wonder what it would be like to do something that is scary and exciting? Maybe I didn’t do a great job with this one this past year, but I have some things up my sleeve for this coming year, just wait and see.

• Make room. For people, for experiences, for love.

For a long time, my mind has been consumed with feelings of inadequacy, self-hatred, anxiety, depression, perfectionism, my eating disorder, all of the above. I have spent so much time painstakingly making sure that everything looked good on the outside that I was not ensuring that everything was ok on the inside. As I’ve told several people in the past year and a half, with all the numbers and calories and food thoughts and self-sabotage and overall anxiety in my head, there hasn’t been any room for anything else. I’ve been burned a couple of times and have closed myself off, not allowing myself to get close to people or allowing people to see the real me. I’ve built a wall around my heart. It’s time to make room. For people, for experiences, for love. Life is short. Time is not guaranteed. So I’ve been trying to tell the people that I love and appreciate just how much I love and appreciate them. I’m trying to do the things that make me happy, travel to the places that make my soul feel free, and take chances on things that are not guaranteed. Most of all, I've really been trying hard to truly let people in and let them see and love the real me.

---

I’m not there yet. I have a lot of work to do. But this past year, I’ve experienced things with people that I have never before. I let people in, even when I knew I was going to have to let them go. I’ve also let people in, knowing that I could let them stick around and that it would be ok. I stopped constantly numbing out, and let myself feel a whole myriad of emotions, emotions I haven't let myself feel for a long time.

Honestly, I’m a very different person than I was a year ago. I’ve seen a lot of things, experienced a lot of things, and have worked really hard. I’ve taken an honest, hard look at myself and my failings, as well as my successes. I’ve matured and grown up quite a bit. I don’t let as many things bug me or get under my skin, and I feel like I’m a little better at seeing the whole picture and riding the wave instead of getting caught up in it.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of things that I think I’m failing at. Believe me. But in this moment, looking ahead at 2020, I’m choosing to see the good things, the growth that I’ve made this past year. A lot of it might have been baby steps, but they say that small steps are more likely to stick than big, dramatic ones. Time will tell. Until then, I’m choosing to be optimistic about the coming year and looking forward to all the POSSIBILITIES that lay ahead of me in this crazy, beautiful life of mine.

Morgan Harper Nichols

ALSO---Happy 1st Birthday to this blog! 🎂🎈I'm SO GRATEFUL to all of you for taking the time to read each week and support me in this new adventure!