2020 will be a year that goes down in history for so many reasons. It could be categorized as the year of discomfort, trauma and pain, yet equally a year of compassion and courage, of clarity, self-care and community support. Whatever this year was for you, there will be some great lessons and revelations, not only about the world and cultures we live in, but most importantly, about how you show up within it. 

Below are some of the key areas and themes that I have observed this year that continue to give me further reflection, highlight more questions and have pushed me to go deeper into my own healing than ever before.

• The global pandemic - the disease and how differently the story is told depending on your view of the world and how close it impacted you or your loved ones; the importance of health and health care and yet the bias within it, that is killing Black and Brown people at much higher rates; the distrust in many of the governments responses and the way in which we individually and collectively responded to it.

• The continuing battle against racial injustice amplified across the world, and whether you deepened your own self-healing and trauma work from the years of overt and systemic oppression, or continued to deny its existence due to your own fragility and privilege, or finally ‘woke up’ to it and judged yourself for all the ways you continue to contribute to it, often unknowingly. The question is where do you stand now and how have you grown and shifted?

• The US election, the fear, the results and the subsequent unsubstantiated and baseless claims of a rigged election with voter fraud, deepening the divide and sparking further questions in the faith of the basic building blocks of democracy. The battle between fact over fiction and all the challenges that still remain ahead to address the divide, the mistrust and deep systemic issues, can no longer be ignored.

• The complex view of ‘work from home’ that can work for many professions and individuals, bringing greater flexibility, less travel time, more time to be with family, but that it can also simultaneously bring different challenges to it: loneliness, inability to switch off, disconnection, overwhelming fatigue juggling ‘family’ life and work in the same space. Also not every person feels ‘safe’ at home, or has the space or indeed has that option.

• The continual excusing/denial of gender-based violence and gender injustice with all the intersections that overlap and intertwine within it, is still one of the most pervasive battles we continue to face in our societies all over the world.

• The focus and re-thinking of ‘wellness’ through self-care, permission to rest, new ways to move your body, rejecting diet culture and self-loving all of your body and taking greater care of what you feed your mind.

• Vulnerability and support from others became central. People leaned back into community, friends or family support more or they rediscovered what ‘family’ and ‘support’ looked like, what wasn’t working and what they needed to survive.

• That as we came together in so many moments - cheering the essential workers at 7pm, or whatever time it was for you, protesting in the streets or online, debating and sharing more, AND the divide around what we value in collective society was highlighted and felt perhaps more acutely than ever before in our lifetime.

• That we all have so much healing to do - whether you are in full acceptance and awareness or not, what we’ve seen and experienced this year has shown clearly how, unless we heal and eliminate generational trauma and generational oppression, we will forever be hurting others from our own bleeding, ignored wounds.

Burn out, trauma, grief, fear, loneliness, gratitude, courage, compassion, anger, sadness, joy are some of the emotions that were amplified and felt, often all at one time, and more regularly than perhaps we’ve ever collectively experienced before.

So what does this mean next for us all? Well, we don’t know. Some say it is already written, others believe this has been the year we needed to reset, to get 2020 vision and begin setting new foundations for our collective conscious growth and evolution. What is next is a question we all will explore together and through our own individual journey. 

As we move into 2021, we offer you 21 ways (10 fearless questions and 11 commitments) to reflect and help you connect deeper to your power, truth and support you exploring your ‘what’s next?’.

10 Fearless Questions To Reflect On

1. What have been the biggest challenges for you this year and what gems of wisdom did you learn from them?

2. What areas of your life are needing more attention, nourishment and deeper presence?

3. What has awakened within you this year that has bought you closer into alignment with who you are and what you truly need and want?

4. What are you still avoiding that if faced could transform your life?

5. What have you learned about your shadow self and how can you dance with it more moving forward?

6. Where have you been contributing (consciously or subconsciously) to upholding or enabling systems of oppression (racial, gender, ableism, sexuality etc) and what are you willing to do differently to unlearn and challenge yourself in removing these from how you show up in the world?

7. What shifts would you like to create that would enable your own personal liberation, fulfillment and growth?

8. What triggers you to react negatively - lash out (verbally or physically), withdraw or abandon yourself - and what rituals, support or new habits can you create to respond differently?

9. How can you lean further into intimacy and vulnerability to truly stand in your truth and allow yourself to be seen?

10. What relationships (people, community, self or material things) in your life need to be reevaluated, renewed, restored or removed?

11 Fearless Commitments To Honor

1. Journey life with a lens of gratitude, abundance and compassion.

2. Believe in your innate personal power.

3. Self-love is at the root of your wellness - it is not optional.

4. Heal at your own pace - nurture and nourish your inner child along the way and spend time getting comfortable with your shadow (the sides of you, you don’t like to face).

5. Make commitments that align with who you are and who you are becoming.

6. Use boundaries to help you focus and protect your energy.

7. Stop rushing important things.

8. Listen to and follow your intuition. (And get clear on when it is not your intuition speaking - when it’s your wound - then go to the 4th commitment).

9. Put your energy into the goals and people that are most important to you.

10. Celebrate progress and failures equally - they are interlinked and equally worthy of honoring.

11. Accept yourself exactly as you are - you are not broken, and you do not need fixing. Remind yourself daily that you are enough, you matter, and you are loved.

Take whatever resonates with you, adapt what doesn’t and create your own. We are not here to be right. We here to honor your wholeness. To hold the mirror, ask the challenging questions and remind you that YOU have the answers. That you are worthy of thriving, loving and fearlessly living in whatever way authentically honors you, your greatness and invites those around you to do the same.