Since 2020, every birthday has been mired in disappointment.  I am deeply disappointed with how my life has turned out. I am disappointed in myself for squandering so many opportunities and continually settling for what I think is the right thing to do, only to end up with the short stick.  The more I think about how my life COULD have been if I had not done this or that, I become even more defeated and depressed. Last year’s birthday was even more awful because it was my first birthday on earth without my mama. This year, I tried to make the best of it, but I feel like a caged bird, stuck and imprisoned. I feel as though I have reached a rock-bottom point in my life.

This means that it’s time for a pivot.

To New Beginnings

At church one Sunday a few weeks ago, the speaker asked the congregation to write down their vision for the future. Aside from getting a new job and having the chance to start traveling again, I had nothing. I am indifferent about everything else. My only real expectation is to be disappointed, as that has been the overarching theme for the last ten years, with the previous five years being especially disappointing.

I have come to the fork in the road, and it is time for a pivot and shift. This is where my churchiness comes in, because I get the feeling that a major plot twist is about to come out of nowhere, because I am at a loss. I am the type of person who doesn’t like surprises and wants to know what is going to happen, so I can control it or decide if I want to do it or not. God knows me well enough that for whatever is coming, I will have to be surprised.

My birthday toasts and blessings this year were, “To New Beginnings: Whatever they may be.” I refuse to label or guess what those new beginnings are.  I will receive them.

That dream…

On August 8, I had a super random dream. I saw a name clearly written in black and white, and the city of Oakland. I knew the name and hadn’t thought of it in twenty years. Of course, I googled the name and found the information that a single girl who has a dream about some random name she hasn’t thought of in twenty years would be looking for.  I was annoyed and even more discouraged.

What was the point of this? To remind me that my life sucks?   I even asked ChatGPT what it meant, and it didn’t provide any satisfactory answers.  So my churchy self decided that this meant I was to pray and intercede for this person.  I don’t know what this person is going through, so it couldn’t hurt to lift them in prayer.  I may never know why this person’s name appeared in my dreams, but perhaps it was to remind me that there is more and I am not dead yet.

A year of liberation

This is a year of liberation for me.  I am liberating myself from some of my toxic and limiting beliefs.  I have started this year of 44 off with several acts of liberation. I am completely liberating myself from the prosperity gospel.  I thought that if I served more at church, gave more to the church, read my Bible more, and did all the things I was supposed to, I would receive more. This is a lie and just a manipulation tactic by churches.  Churches teach this false gospel to people to keep them bound and stuck.  I no longer want to view my relationship with God as a transactional one.  I am generous because that is one of my values and who I am. I am not generous and do things to receive.

I am liberating myself from my phone. Excessive phone use is doing something to us as a society, and I want to stop my phone addiction, so I stopped my News push alerts and unsubscribed from Apple News.  I subscribe to our local newspaper, The San Francisco Chronicle, because I think it is essential to support local newspapers.

I am also liberating myself from expectations. I expected my life to look a certain way by this age, and none of it has happened, so it is time to liberate myself from expectations.  This is where the root of my disappointment began, so perhaps it’s time to let go of my expectations. There is more than one way to do things, and so perhaps my life will be completely different from what I thought, and that is okay.

The Next Phase: RELEASE

I was in a yoga class, and the instructor, Rachelle, helped me release my neck and hips when we were doing the forward fold. I knew right then that the next phase and theme for my Fall Push 2025 would be RELEASE. My body and life are craving release. I want to feel again.  I want to feel excitement, joy, desire, fascination, discovery, and pleasure.  Religion teaches you to dissociate from feeling and to suppress it—no more.

On my birthday, I wrote a letter to myself to be opened at the end of the year. It was filled with hope, and my experience with doing things like this is that they often do happen because we plant the seeds in our subconscious, and we play our part in making them happen. I have discovered lists of goals I wrote ten or fifteen years ago, and I have done nearly all of them.  The fact that I can’t consciously name any goals for the future, except to get a new job and travel, signals that there are new possibilities on the horizon that I have not yet considered, which makes it even more exciting.

Here’s to New Beginnings

Whatever they may be