2023 has brought change for me but in the best ways - starting a job in the legal industry helping victims of domestic violence and moving in with my partner. As I have done since 2017, this is my reflection on 2023.

The original post on therapy was written when I had just started therapy. Having finished therapy in January 2022, I have had time to reflect on the overall experience. I wanted to document what it was like, what I have learned and my overall takeaways from the experience. 

I have thought about writing about this before on various occasions, but tackling this topic scared me and I wanted to make sure my experience was recent enough that it felt authentic. I debated whether to even post about loss and grief because it is so personal and is such a complex and difficult process.  

Death is a taboo subject in our society and it makes people uncomfortable. As no one knows what happens after death, it often feels intimidating and is one of those subjects that we avoid thinking about until we are forced to confront it. But the truth is all of us will experience loss at some point, and not talking about it only makes it that much harder when we have to go through it. As loss is something everyone will encounter at some point, and it is rarely discussed I thought it might be helpful to document my experience for somebody else to read. 

 

The end of this year wasn’t what I would have hoped but that doesn’t mean that the whole of this year was bad. In fact, I would say the first half was pretty good and I really enjoyed this summer. 2022 has had some good memories, even if there were really difficult times. As I do at the end of every year, I wanted to document what I have learnt in 2022. 

Dear reader,

I’ve had the title of this blog in my drafts for a while but didn’t quite know how to tackle it initially.

Since graduating, I have had a lot more free time on my hands and a lot more time to reflect on my experiences. Having finished my degree, I no longer have a clear structure and everything is up to me. This has led to a natural pause after being involved in a lot over the last year. I have been reliving memories by looking at photos in my camera roll and playing back videos. I came across the clips that I took during the lockdown as some sort of video diary of what it was like.

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself increasingly more conscious of the impact that I have on the planet and environment. I’ve always cared about the planet and hate to see the damage to it, but beforehand, I didn’t really give much thought to how my actions could be affecting it. One of the good things about sustainability and eco-friendliness becoming so big on social media (although it should have never been a trend and rather something we are always looking out for) was that it got me to think more deeply about what I was already doing and what more I could do. This post may seem very obvious and not particularly mind-blowing, but I am posting it more as a reminder that it matters more what you do change, no matter how small. Social media these days is bombarded with seemingly perfect sustainable lifestyles so I wanted to show a more human and realistic side.