What happens when you start the new year off in a funk?

That is the predicament that I’m currently facing and the main reason why I’ve been so quiet since we celebrated the holidays.

With today being January 15th and marking the half-way point of January, I’ve decided to share how I’m feeling as a way to give myself more grace and hopefully reassure those who are experiencing similar emotions.

I’m an over thinker on a good day, so it certainly doesn’t help being in lockdown (and now a state of emergency) during a cold Canadian winter. 

I’ve been racking my brain trying to understand why I’m not feeling better. Understand why I can’t feel happier (not helpful at all by the way). And yes, for the record, I do have a daily gratitude practice.

For some reason, I thought that 2021 would bring some feeling of change. A sense of a fresh start, a new beginning, but lol and behold, 2021 started exactly how 2020 ended.

The funny thing is that I can laugh as I write this because I know darn well the same can be said for every other new year, but I guess there wasn’t the weight of “let’s get this fu%*ing year over with!” that came with the ending of 2020.

How do we learn to stop judging our emotions? Where did the belief even come from that having negative emotions such as sadness were bad?

As crazy as this may seem, I am reminding myself to be grateful for all of my emotions and feelings since there were so many years where I simply buried them all and pretended that I was happy. Which turns out is super unhealthy and will eventually catch up with you in some form of disease, mysterious body rashes, aches, pains, etc.

I appreciate as caregivers, that our emotions and feelings are even more intense. 

Our role of being a caregiver is out of our hands. We cannot control that. 

We do control our thoughts and that’s where it all begins. I am focusing on grace and self-compassion. I don’t need to understand past feelings to change future feelings.

Wishing all of my amazing caregiver community a 2021 filled with self-love, self-compassion and self-care.

My go-to recipe for a more peaceful me. Share in the comments below if you can resonate.