Happy New Year! As you read this post, I will be jumping in the Atlantic ocean with my awesome family for a polar bear swim, minus one mermaid who had to leave early. You are sorely missed. This is our 17th? year of doing it and I hope we always do. It's wild and so darn cold, you feel the liquid ice melt away all the negativity in your brain and body. The rule is completely under the water... or it doesn't count. That one year when I had the wee-littles and they wore fuzzy bathrobes over their bathing suits, blue hands and lips, teeth chattering after a 37F dip in the rain and both of them wanted ice cream cones at the pier afterwards. Gobsmacked. Good times!
There’s magic in the turning of the Wheel, a moment suspended between what was and what could be. As the calendar flips and the world collectively exhales, we find ourselves standing at the edge of something vast and unknown. The new year offers a clean slate—not just a reset on our to-do lists, but a profound opportunity to rethink who we are and who we wish to become.
In the rush of life, it’s easy to lose sight of the transformative power of a new beginning. We're often so focused on the weight of what’s ahead—our plans, our goals, the expectation that this year will be better than the last—that we forget the true beauty of a fresh start lies in its potential for self-discovery, acceptance, and growth. A new year doesn’t erase what’s behind us; it simply invites us to look at it differently. It gives us the space to see our past—not as something that defines us, but as something that has shaped us, and now, in this moment, we get to decide what we do with that story moving forward.
The new year is a gorgeous reminder that we are not bound by our past mistakes, our missed opportunities, or our shortcomings.
We can leave behind the stories we’ve told ourselves about who we are and make room for the stories we’re still learning to tell. The pressure to be “new” can sometimes feel overwhelming—like we’re expected to shed all traces of the person we’ve been. But perhaps the invitation is subtler: to simply be more present with ourselves, to honor who we’ve been and who we’re becoming. It’s about being human, not perfect.
There’s something deeply emotional about all of this. It can stir a sense of both hope and vulnerability—a yearning for something more, coupled with a quiet fear of failure or disappointment. We may set resolutions, write down goals, or dream of a better version of ourselves. But more than that, we might feel the pull of possibility: the chance to show up more authentically, to love more freely, to give ourselves the compassion we too often reserve for others. A clean slate isn’t a call to fix what’s broken. It’s an invitation to accept ourselves in all of our complexity and, from that place of self-awareness, to move forward with intention.
The permission to try, to falter, to try again. No moment of change comes without its shadows—life is a dance of light and dark, success and failure, joy and pain. But what the clean slate offers is an awareness that we are always in motion, and always evolving.
We are not the sum of our setbacks or missteps, singularly or collectively. Don't chuck me in the ocean just yet, my head isn't buried in the sand. Anyone with half a brain sees the other side of this argument, but I refuse to start my new year with what if's about you know who and the extremes that may or may not come. This may be the first (and hopefully last) time in my life that I am rooting for the chaos of incompetence to do its work and freeze the fossils.
This year we can choose to be more attuned to our own rhythms—our energetic needs, our desires, our fears. We can work on our intuition and trust that each small step, each moment of personal growth, adds to the larger picture we’re creating. And if we stumble along the way, we remember: the slate is always there, waiting for us to begin again.
Personal reinvention, and deep, emotional reconnection—with ourselves and the community around us. Give yourself permission to pause, to breathe, to be. So, as we embark on this new year, let us do so with the understanding that we don’t need to have everything figured out. The brilliance lies in the openness, in the willingness to begin, over and over again, with the same love, compassion, and grace that we so often give to others.
After all, the most powerful new beginnings aren’t the ones that come with grand plans or resolutions—they’re the ones that come from simply being willing to embrace who we are, right here, right now.
Wishing everyone reading this the courage to face their fears and adjust their sails as needed to feel connected and empowered in their own life. Let's create and imagine a better world as writers, makers, artists and doers, as Minerva says in my Science Fiction story Quantum-C
"I am the future." I have lots to share and new projects on the way. If you haven't read Banshee yet, I invite you to check it out and send deep gratiitude to all who have and left book reviews. It's not your bog-standard ghost story by a long shot.
Who's with me?
Thank you for being Literati, feel free to share your hopes, goals and dreams in the drop down. Happy New Year! Thank you for dreaming with me, for showing up, and for being someone who wants to help make the world a better place. If you found value in this post, please forward it to a friend and encourage them to subscribe. I don't post a lot and I definitely don't email spam (that drives me bonkers too) but I have a lot to say and hopefully it touches you and cuts through the noise.
Until next time, find your Peace, Love, Hustle and then Read or Write. - XoXo Bibiana Krall
"All heroines, all the time."
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"Freedom is a bird. Freedom is unapologetic, sometimes it’s lonely, and more often it’s bold."
–Venus Tree by Bibiana Krall
Thank you for this beautiful post and for sharing your thoughts, insights, experience, and wisdom. You are right, we are not bound by our past or expected to have our future chiseled in stone, but can embrace the experience in the now, in the moment, and figure it out as we move with each step. To have an outline works for me, but that outline is open for change. It is just that, a work in-progress. I look forward to seeing, reading, hearing about where your nexts steps take you. Cheers, my friend! 🌟