Your Favorites of 2023: A Year of Shared Journeys
From Suffering to Community – Exploring Mental Health, Motherhood, and How We Spend Our Energy
Reading time is about 4 minutes.
I remember being in middle and high school and feeling a physical reaction whenever I was asked to write down goals or resolutions. Usually, this was a forced school assignment that made me want to run, hide, or throw up from the anxiety of it all.
As I’ve gotten older, it feels like the amount of things I set out to do and haven’t been able to complete has become a long list. College, projects, financial goals…they all burden me every year that I cannot complete them.
I’m not going to plan ultra productivity this year.
I’m not going to intentionally crush it.
I’m not going to bury myself with work outside of what I have the capacity to hold. I am not going to willingly break down in mind, body, and spirit like I did in 2023.
What I am going to do is be intentional about where my energy goes and who it is given to. I am going to work on my internal self and heal. I want to let go of the anger within me and pray with every resentment, “Lord, have mercy on me.”
This newsletter has become a written pulse on my journey as a mother and individual constantly experimenting with life. It is a privilege to share these journeys alongside you.
Regarding what your favorites were this year versus mine, some pieces I poured myself into might not be listed as “top” community choices. I have been really interested in learning how to use my suffering to help start conversations about care practices in the mental health field as well as in our motherhood journeys.
I also started and (have barely worked on) a second newsletter, called The Bible School Notebook documenting my learnings and musings while reading scripture. I wrote about my chronic pain and combatting hopelessness here:
“There is a desire to be close to them. There is a desire to write or create even when I have little energy to do so. My definition of functioning has changed hour by hour.
What is the most important thing right now?
Is it the ability to bring in income? Take care of my family? Grow in my career skills?
It is to live. It seems obvious to everyone but the deep roots of my identity still provide me with the wrong answers. The “old man” Apostle Paul speaks of in Romans still tries to take over despite how dead he is.”
If you are looking to dive deeper into scripture with me in 2024, this is a newsletter that I am developing more.
Reader Favorites of 2023
Here are the top newsletter reads you returned to, digested, and shared this 2023 year. I appreciate all of you. Please let me know how I can serve you moving forward.
If you are able to support me financially this year so I can take time away from the day job and write more research-backed newsletters and develop the podcast I started, please do so.
Developing the podcast has been particularly tricky because it takes more time to write, edit, and find a quiet space. In the future, financial backing would let me interview people on many of the topics Motherhood Minute has been discussing since 2022: parenting, mental health, work, and faith.
Thank you again, readers. I treasure you.
I love how you're committed to being intentional about where your energy goes this year and to whom--instead of overburdening yourself with goals. It sounds like you're listening to your body, your soul, and taking direction from a sacred internal place that is connected to your higher power, rather than being pulled by the sway of the outside world. So beautiful and inspiring.