Here we find ourselves on the first day of a new year, and all that newness brings with her.

For me, the new year often brings to mind this beloved poem by Lucille Clifton, one I first read in an Oprah magazine and kept tucked in my journal:

i am running into a new year

i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twentysix and thirtysix
even thirtysix but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me

—Lucille Clifton, from Good Woman: Poems and A Memoir 1969-1980

Letting go of ‘what we said to ourselves about ourselves’

What are the things you’ve said about yourself, at sixteen, or 26 – or 46, or 66?

Perhaps all the things we’ve falsely believed about ourselves can be summed up in this way:

She thinks there’s something wrong with her.
He thinks there’s something wrong with him.

But there’s not.

A New Year’s ritual

Today, my family will do a burning bowl ritual, where we’ll burn our regrets from the past year, honor our losses, and, perhaps, ‘let go of what we said to ourselves about ourselves.’

We’ll take slips of paper and write of what we’d like to leave behind, and then we’ll burn it in a bowl. (A few years ago, I nearly set the bowl on fire while doing this with my kids. Yikes! I learned not to put the hot, melting candle in the bowl with the paper!)

Then we’ll bow our heads and hearts to what is coming, to the kernel of new life that yearns to be born in us. This is a different kind of burning – perhaps a stoking of the fires of longing.

It’s a simple but powerful way to greet the new year if your heart is wanting a ritual for the day.

To all that is being born in you, Karly