My Intention for 2024 and What I'm Leaving Behind in 2023

Channeling my god damn cheetah.

When I alluded to this post last week, I had yet to write it. But it’s been building up in my head for a long time. 2023 was a massive year of reflection and discovery in so many ways that I knew it’d be cathartic to try to put it into words. 

In all honesty, I struggled writing this post and was berating myself for not being able to get it out on Sunday. But I knew it didn't feel quite right yet. I was afraid of not being able to do my feelings justice, or of being misunderstood. I'm still afraid of the latter, because this is probably the most honest and heartfelt thing I’ve written to date. But when I read this quote from Joan Didion last night, “I don’t know what I think until I write about it,” I thought “Aha! That’s why I want to write.” 

So in that spirit, here it goes.

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On my birthday this past year, multiple women asked me the same question—what’s something you want to take with you, and something you want to leave behind this year? I had never been asked that on my birthday before and found it to be such a meaningful question. 

At the time I had declared I wanted to leave behind self-doubt and self-criticism and take with me either openness, grace for myself, or trusting my intuition. 

You see, 2023 was kind of an emotional doozy. There’s been a lot of positive change and growth, but with it a lot of struggling and anxiety and second-guessing. 

It’s as if someone reached their hand inside me and turned the gear I didn’t know existed a few notches off center. Not so far off that I don’t recognize myself, but far enough away from the baseline that I feel untethered. Loose. Jostled around. 

In trying to describe this feeling to my partner a while back he likened it to the mental equivalent of growing pains. You know when you’re a kid and you wake up in the middle of the night, your legs aching in discomfort for no apparent reason? So you yell for your parents and one of them comes in and soothes you, “it’s ok, it’s just growing pains.”

THAT. That is what I have felt this past year, but inside me. For a multitude of reasons I have questioned a lot of things I thought I previously knew.

On the forefront, they’re all healthy and normal things, some larger than others. But I have been so hard on myself for having mixed emotions and feeling big feelings as a result of shining a light on some of these spots in the first place. I've been tethering myself to the “shoulds,” casting judgment upon myself when I feel differently than I previously did or than what society seems to demand of us. 

I think it’s the culmination of a lot of different things:

• I fully acclimated to the new job I started midway through 2022, to the point where I began noticing I was lonely at work.

• I asked my partner to move in with me shortly after our one-year anniversary this spring, and while I'm so happy we took this step together, it took a lot of courage and vulnerability to navigate.

• I had challenges come up with a close friendship of mine that caused me to look at things in a different light.

• I felt lonely and disconnected from my friends more often than I have in the past, partially due to a lot of them being in busier seasons of their lives while I chose to intentionally make space for silence and do less. 

• I explored the big questions of kids and marriage and what I want from life and began educating myself on my fertility health.

• I completed my first full year of therapy back in October, digging up a whole new level of self-awareness I didn’t know possible. 

• I went on a women's retreat that caused me to look deeply inside myself and ask some big questions, while simultaneously feeling the most connected to my womanhood I’ve ever felt. 

• I mourned the loss of my dear Aunt Michelle after her year-long battle with leukemia, a hole that still unexpectedly catches me off guard. 

• I tried new activities that challenged me both physically and mentally—riding my bike, cross-country skiing, cardio boxing, outdoor rock climbing, and rappelling.

• I read a couple books that rocked my worldview.

• I started seriously exploring my desire to write by starting this Substack and establishing a (mostly) weekly writing practice. 

As a result of all these experiences, the narrative that was in my head a good chunk of 2023 was that of self-doubt and self-judgment. Confusion in trying to separate my gut feelings from the noise in my head.

I have often felt selfish or silly for feeling so at odds with myself when there’s nothing really wrong on the surface. I have a stable job, secure financial means, a beautiful home I bought myself, a loving partner and family and friends. It’s almost as if once all those things fell into place, it allowed room for something else to unfold. 

For the last time I truly struggled was years ago, when ending a seven-year relationship, giving up the dog we shared together, and living by myself for the first time. I discovered then that I didn’t really know who I was; I had spent the entirety of my adulthood up until that point being coupled. 

That experience woke me up to myself. I became truly independent for the first time, discovering the music I liked and how I liked to spend my time on my own terms. I spent an entire year saying yes to pretty much everything that came my way. 

Looking back, I operated purely on instinct. It’s like I was in survival mode, my instincts kicking in and just knowing what I needed to do to take care of myself. There was no question in my mind that I’d live by myself, that I’d continue playing tennis and volunteering, etc.  

Flash forward to today and I believe I am meeting another new part of myself that was previously buried. It’s unsettling at times because, while those other parts of me are still there, I’m uncovering this part that’s demanding and questioning more.

It’s like these parts of me are at odds with one another—rule-follower, good girl Morganne is constantly fighting, criticizing, and judging the curious, more demanding Morganne. But curious Morganne has woken up and she isn’t going back to sleep. 

I think I’ve been misunderstanding this newly emerged part of me. Looking at her through the lens of good girl Morganne and thinking there's something wrong with her. You shouldn’t feel this way, you've got so much to be grateful for. Why can’t you live in the present more? Why do you feel differently about that situation, you didn’t before. And on and on and on.

Well I say enough!!!! The energy I want to embrace going into 2024 is self-assuredness. The permission to make myself big and boldly claim space. State what it is I feel and want, unabashedly, without disclaimers or caveats or worrying what people think. To orient myself to this new equilibrium.

If 2023 was the year of making space for silence and self-reflection, 2024 is the year of acting on it.

I am going to be a god damn cheetah. I’m letting the cheetah out of the cage and the sprinkles out of the box. I am going to live a creative life and not let fear dictate my decisions.

And that starts with publishing this post.