​I feel it every January and have for many years, likely because my adult-life Decembers historically brought mayhem to my life, my routine, and my ability to think straight while ensuring every other person in my world had their traditions honored.
 
My longing and love for January has never been attached to New Year’s resolutions—which I do not make. I look to January as my clean slate, a relief, a deep breath. Whatever stress came with the never-ending December list is completely erased. Poof. I embrace my return to normalcy with energy and optimism.
 
What I did not know is that there is a name for this condition! When I read several articles this year about the Fresh Start Effect, there it was, what I have always known but did not have a title for.
 
“Rooted in behavioral science, the fresh start effect is the psychological boost we experience when temporal landmarks, such as the beginning of a new year, month, or week, help us mentally separate our past selves from our future potential.” *
 
Fortunately, we can apply a fresh start to any moment we choose. January has already reach its edge, but I am holding onto the feeling of newness.
 
If I finally learned one tiny truth that can have big impact it is this:  any new month, any new week, any new day can be the new start we need.
 
*Definition from Jodi Wellman MAPP, in Psychology Today blog posted December 2024.

My husband and I are completely enthralled with our grandchildren’s excitement for Santa Claus. We listen as our son reports how most parenting moments from October forward hinge upon the concept of Santa’s watchful eye. We remember this well.
 
And then…we discussed our own young experience of Santa. We determined our first solid memories of this central figure were from around age four and the heartbreaking information that it was all a myth carried out by our parents arrived somewhere around age 10. That means our solid Santa years total about seven holidays. Seven daily countdowns in December. Seven carefully constructed gift lists. Seven platters of cookies and milk on the counter. Seven completely sleepless Christmas Eves.  
 
Not only did our parents carefully construct a space for us to believe in and enjoy the Santa years – the entire world, our neighbors, teachers, television shows, and even department stores – all supported that belief. 
 
But…my husband and I now respectively claim 64 and 54 Christmases on the books. Only those faraway seven offer this magical element of the world-travelling toy giver and his flying reindeer. That leaves the actual Santa experience percentage very low, but the memories and the impact of that wonderful myth are incredibly deep. Santa, that guy, still kind of shows up every year in our thoughts and our concept of the holidays.
 
Do you see where I am going with this? 
 
If we could put Santa aside for a minute and just consider that when a message, a theory, a story, is repeated and upheld all around you, especially as a child, it simply becomes true and real, even when it is not.
 
We do not need to wipe the Santa story from our brains. But some others? Well, maybe this is a good time to look back and review other messages that are not so wonderful, also outdated, and still play a role in our belief system. It would be the perfect year-end gift to offload a few of those, wouldn’t it?

To Journal or Not to Journal: Part II The Benefits
 
If you find yourself ready to open the door to journaling for wellness or to assist your mental health healing protocol, you are also opening the door to some incredibly positive outcomes. Amazing what a pen, paper, and a few minutes each day (or week) can do.
 
15 benefits of using a wellness journal:

1. Create a safe personal space
2. Quiet ruminations
3. Reduce anxiety and stress
4. Build mindfulness
5. Grow gratitude
6. Improve sleep
7. Identify patterns and triggers
8. Regulate and process emotions
9. Prepare for counseling
10. Record notes from a counseling session
11. Track physical and emotional health symptoms
12. Build confidence
13. Outline challenges and problems
14. Craft potential solutions to the challenges and problems
15. Re-read your entries to reflect and find advances or continued stumbling blocks

​To Journal or Not to Journal: Part I The Barriers
 
Benefits of a journaling habit for wellness are frequently cited. But great outcomes are not always enough to conquer the personal barriers to opening a journal. A general research scour offered repetitive themes that turned into a list of ten common reasons people offer that keep them from journaling—for wellness or mental health.
 
10 Common Reasons People Chose Not to Journal:

1. Think they cannot journal “right” or worried they will journal “wrong”
2. Think they need writing skills to journal
3. Intimated by a blank page
4. Find a journal stressful (with prompts or without prompts)
5. Think someone will read it and learn their innermost thoughts
6. Cannot make time or find time to do it
7. Think journaling is a diary of events
8. Not inspired to journal
9. Do not want to focus on negative situations
10. Do not know the benefits of journaling – why even do this?

 
Maybe learning the benefits, giving it a trial run, and feeling the outcomes can chip away at the barriers. See Part II to decide if any benefits might improve your world a tiny bit. (Or a big bit…)

Q: When should I consider Ketamine Therapy for TRD/MDD?
​
A: AFTER

• you pursued therapy (or are still in therapy) with a good counselor
• you tried two or three or four anti-depressants and never break through the brick wall you face every day
• you have read all the books, listened to all the experts, prayed all the prayers, spoke all the mantras, and walked all the quiet walks you could fit into a decade or two or three  
• you stumble across a first mention of this treatment and cannot stop digging into patient stories and outcomes
• and your heart tells your mind you are ready.
• then, yes, consider a new option, a new truth, a new day.

 
Ketamine Therapy could be worth your search.

Many people know them – the Before and Afters.
 
And in between the Before and After is a moment, an event, an experience, that becomes a powerful, invisible dividing line in a lifespan. The Before and After is noticeable in conversations, a concrete being all its own. “Well, before I…” “After the….”
 
Before and Afters can be for the better or for the painful worse.

• The loss of a loved one or a relationship
• An acceptance of faith or a door closed to belief
• The joy of a birth
• A traumatic singular event
• A diagnosis
• An unexpected incredible opportunity
• A physical relocation

Every life is offered significant moments. But not all are so powerfully evident that they drop an anchor right where they appeared that will never resurface. The mark is indelible.
 
Completing ketamine therapy is at the top of my short list of lifetime Before and Afters. I cannot unknow what it taught me. I cannot unbelieve what it made me believe. Finally.
 
This is not because ketamine therapy was a singular cure that solved my conflicts, changed my circumstances, or erased a mixed bag of incessant anguish. It was not. I still struggle at times with a type of sadness that I know does not show up in others; my brain still returns to misguided thoughts.
 
But Before ketamine therapy I could not see my way to the other side. After ketamine therapy, I can remember that the other side exists and developed tools to make my way back.  I will take this as a victory in my Before and Afters.

​At a meditation discussion one night, the leader offered a parable that offered an answer to why happiness is so easy for some people and why others seem cast into sadness and suffering:
 
Every person, every human spirit, is born directly into a beautiful, immense castle with many brightly lit rooms, full of possibility and promise.
 
For some, the walk through life leaves their base, their castle, largely unchanged. They are surrounded by light and encouragement and hold fast to that initial security. Certainly, everyone has a dim day here or there. But their castle is largely intact and they can see their way through each moment of life with a level of strength and clarity.
 
For others, life brings circumstances or challenges that shut off a light at some point, then another, then another. After a time, the bright castle is no longer accessible, the grand rooms are forgotten and dark.
 
I was very taken with this short story that night a few years ago and have thought of it often. It is not particularly encouraging, but it does offer a basic truth that some things just are as they are.
 
I do not think we select which castle we are born into, or the roads that lead to it and away from it. We enter where we enter and must find our way. I see it as my job now to keep the lights on and to get back to the rooms of promise I know I was gifted when I arrived.

Along with thousands and thousands (and thousands) of others, I packed my car with blankets and chairs, filled the gas tank, prepared a days’ worth of snacks, and drove into the path of totality this spring. The total solar eclipse of 2024 took me in.
 
As we drove across state lines and saw the modified traffic patterns, welcoming signs, and warnings about delays, I questioned what was calling the crowds to witness this four-minute event.
 
What answer did I come up with? Maybe…as a population, we have figured out how to take control of so many things that a circumstance executively produced by nature is one of the last of the untouched frontiers. If humankind could figure out how to control the sun and moon, we would. But we have not. And therein lies a loss of power, an awe to something stronger than our own understanding, and a phenomenon that is out of reach.

​We are either fascinated or annoyed.
 
I land among the fascinated and wish to leave nature alone to keep doing what it does best – send us the awe.

Journals pop up within the greatest topics, to support specific components of our lives. During the COVID years, I noticed the turn in this direction prove even stronger, likely from the hours of isolated internet scrolling joined with a new opportunity for self-contained health practices. (And the explosion of depression, anxiety, and loss of ease from those same isolated hours.) The trend has continued and flourished.

​A journal can still be a daily diary of activities. In addition, a narrowly-focused journal provides a user with clear support for one area of life that may have risen on the priority list, such as exercise. A few types of journals that support overall wellness:

• Sleep Journal: tracks and assesses sleep challenges and habits to achieve better rest
• Fitness Journal: tracks and supports your fitness routine and goals
• Dream Journal: catches all the stories that fill our sleep, shows common themes, and helps find meaning in them
• Gratitude Journal: creates a regular habit of listing people, moments, actions, items, that we are thankful for
• Morning Pages: asks for three pages of long-hand “stream of consciousness” writing to start the day
• 5 Minute Journals: takes away the daunting concept of adding another time-sucking habit to a day
• Expressive Writing: focuses on thoughts and feelings to work through a trauma – also a form of therapy
• Nature Journal: looks for writing, drawing, or reflection in response to time spent in and with nature
• Meditation Journal: captures intentions prior to and records the experience of a meditation
• Bullet Journals: offers a system to follow lists, goals, and calendars, and gather ideas all in one place that can be basic or elaborate
• Art Journals: provides the canvas for sketching, scenes, colors, doodles, thoughts

(…not full definitions, but you get the point and can dig deeper if interested!)
 
For those who look at a blank page and feel the panic rise, pre-printed journals with prompts can remove the intimidation factor and welcome in a new, healthy habit.
 
What I love about all kinds of journals is that there are no hard and fast rules, no tests to pass, or failing grade at the end of the day. Your journal, on any topic and in any form, is solely for you.