New year, New you…that is what all the slogans and memes say throughout January. But what if you don’t want a new you? I have had too much of a change to reinvent myself again. What if I just try to establish the new me that was enforced on me. The new me that I didn’t have any say over? The new me that has to find how to ground herself again in order to keep being the daughter, wife, mother and sister.

There is something refreshing about the new year and if you are lucky enough to get a break, it gives you the opportunity to pause and rethink the patterns and habits that you have fallen in to, but I think it is also good to be mindful of how much pressure you are putting yourself under whilst trying to be something else. Its ok to take time and to settle into the you that you are.

I have tried over the years to keep being the person I was, to keep doing the things that I always did, whilst also being the person that had to change as I didn’t have the same family life as before. Relationships and roles had changed, I had changed, but my expectations of what should be, hadn’t. This led to all sorts of conflict, upset and turmoil.

It has taken a while, but I am learning that it is ok to take time to become established as the person living with grief. That it takes time to understand and adjust and that I don’t have to always be on the treadmill of improving and striving for more. To be able to grow as a person I also need to take time to understand. That is to understand me, and to understand those around me. We all adapt to grief differently and we can’t expect to follow the same pattern. Grief isn’t linear and neither are our relationships.

So I still wish you all a happy new year, but encourage you to be the same and take the time to be an established you.