With the New Year comes an excitement, an anticipation and hope for a year that will be joyful and promising - a year that will be filled with nothing but the best.

I remember being younger and feeling a certain magic at midnight- like I was tingling with newness. I would shift into a new person, I just knew it. Somewhere, deep down, I believed that I would effortlessly shed into a new skin overnight. I’d develop new habits in the blink of an eye, and I would be ethereal, brilliant woman who would leave the world around her in awe and wonder.

Now my birthday is also in january, a literal few days from the New Year, and this only convinced me further that a change was happening. I wouldn’t be the same girl this year. I would be renewed.

In some ways, I still feel this way. I don’t have a new year, new me mindset, but each year comes, and I feel a sense of relief, hope and insecurity. Relief that I have been blessed with a new year, hope that this year will include positive growth and change, and insecurity over never knowing what the future holds.

I don’t have any desire to delve into details on what I’d like to achieve in this new year, but I pray for a joyful and full one for us all.