I resolve to not make a resolution

I’ve been fighting the word resolution for a while, noticing how it unsettles something in me. Superficially, it’s a word that promises clarity, a tightening of loose threads, a finality that suggests we’ve arrived somewhere conclusive. But in healing spaces, and honestly in my own inner life, resolution rarely behaves that way. It feels more like a pressure to declare something finished before the body has had a chance to speak. The nervous system doesn’t operate on the calendar’s timeline, and yet every January, the world seems to ask us to compress our becoming into a single, declarative sentence. I find myself pushing away the invitation, not out of cynicism, but out of reverence for the slow, relational unfolding that healing actually requires.

When I sit with others, or with clay, or with the quiet company of my own complicated history, I’m reminded that resolution is less an endpoint and more a shifting horizon. Sometimes what looks like progress is simply the softening of a previously rigid place. Sometimes what feels like backtracking is actually a deeper layer asking to be witnessed. If I’m honest, I don’t want to resolve myself. I want to stay in conversation with myself. I want to honor the parts that aren’t ready to be swept up, the stories that need more time in the kiln. So this year, instead of reaching for resolution, I’m practicing something gentler—an openness to continued becoming, a willingness to let the unfinished be sacred in its own right. I want to be more me. Resolved.