What a Year...Again

What a year it’s been. Full of everything from the distracting and discouraging to the delicious and delightful.

About a decade ago, my friend Kate gave me a recording of a song that was not (until recently) published: What a Year For a New Year by Dan Wilson.

The song opens with these words:

What a year for a new year
We need it like we needed life I guess
Last one left us lying in a mess
What a year for a new year

The first time I heard the song, I thought, “Wow, that is uniquely true this year.”

But every year I listen to it, I think the same thing, “Wow, the last one really did leave us lying in a mess.” I’ve come to think instead that this is the way life cycles around: time goes by and a bunch of stuff happens and some of it is great and a lot of it is hard and it happens every year.

Here at the end of 2022, I invite you to listen to Dan Wilson’s beautiful song and contemplate all of what’s happened and how all of it feels and know that whatever it is, it’s part of the universal human experience.

The last lines of the song are

Let it go without a trace
Wipe the teardrops from our faces
Oh! What a year for a new year!

Let it go and take a breath. Let’s see what cycles through next.

Shake Out & Step In: Clearing the Peanut Butter Jar

How was your year? Are you sad to let 2022 go, or are you happily kicking it to the curb? For me, it was a whole lot of everything: up and down through joy, connection and adventure; pain, fear and grief. There was plenty of it all.

No matter what kind of year 2022 has been for you, whether it was the greatest in recent memory or a dumpster fire of a mess, I encourage ending every year by letting go and releasing to make space for whatever is next.

You could imagine your life as a jar of peanut butter. (No seriously, stay with me on this. And apologies to those with nut allergies – if that's you, go with Sunbutter or honey butter!)

Your life is the jar and the peanut butter is everything that happened, every experience, emotion, thought and action.

This year, you've probably had some peanut butter that was truly delicious – on an apple or in a sandwich with homemade jam or off a spoon at midnight. It's also likely that you've had some not-so-delicious peanut butter experiences – like when someone served up peanut butter and sardines on Saltines or when that peanut butter and pickles experiment didn't go the way you thought.

Lots of different peanut buttery experiences all year long.

And now at the end of the year, your jar is almost empty and it's time to clean it out and get ready to fill it with PB '23. But at the end of the jar: you can scrape the best you can with a knife but no matter what you do, there will be peanut butter gunk stuck on the sides and in the nooks and crannies. To start fresh, you've really got to clear that jar out.

Sure, you could just cruise on through and pile next year's peanut butter onto the sticky leftovers from last year. You could figure that it's pretty much empty so why not skip the messy cleaning up bit? But no matter how good the 2022 peanut butter was, piling next year's on top is going to taste a little funky.

So what's the best way to clean out a peanut butter jar? My partner, the best dishwasher you will ever meet (that man has forgotten more about cleaning up than I will ever know) taught me that what works best is to fill the jar half way with hot water, add a good dollop of soap and shake the bejeezus out of it.

Seriously, even a couple of runs through the dishwasher on Power Wash doesn't work as well as the Hot Water, Soap & Shake method. After a good shake, the jar is clear all the way to the bottom and it's ready for whatever goes into it next.

Silly metaphor aside, shaking is an under-rated but truly powerful movement to relieve tension, move energy and relax the nervous system. In nature, the gazelle who's escaped the lion trots off and shakes. The opossum who played dead for the afternoon rouses herself with a whole body shake. Two dogs have a fight, they both step away and shake from nose to tail.

Humans on the other hand, especially Western humans, learn in stressful situations to tighten up and power through. Stiff upper lip, and all that.

As an end of the year practice, instead make the radical choice to shake it off and release. There are lots of ways to shake, of course. It's not complicated. Right now, you could shake out your hand and notice how that feels. You can shake yourself gently or like a Poloroid picture.

Whatever you choose, though, do it from grounded gratitude. First find your feet. Get grounded and relaxed in the support under you and shake from there. Without ground, shaking can become just so much flailing. Instead, shake from support. Then breathe in gratitude for everything that’s happened, everything you’ve been through. Even the tricky sticky parts. Because it’s all of those things that landed you right where you are now: alive and breathing and getting ready to start a new year.

So my goobery friends, as the year draws to a close, clear out the peanut buttery remnants of 2022. Release what's happened, trusting that you've gotten what you could from it. From a place of grounded gratitude, shake it clean.

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Guided Shaking Experiences

Shaking is a simple practice that you can do on your own in any way that feels good to you. And if you're looking for a guided practice, here are a couple:

Mindful Movement Stress Relief ~ Shake it Off is a guided movement meditation that I offer on the Insight Timer meditation app. It’s totally free and takes only a few minutes.

On Thursday, December 29 at 11am/Eastern on Zoom, join the Nourishing Movement community for a FREE open class for everyBODY called Shake Out 2022 and Step Into 2023. Great music is the hot water. Your awareness is the soap. Lots of kinds of shaking clears the way for a new year. All bodies are welcome. Go here to get the link, a reminder and the recording.