Hey friend,

Well, here we are. The last day of 2021. If you’re reading this, it means that the wifi hotspot on my phone held out long enough for me to send this last letter of the year to you. 

I happened upon a thought a few months ago, and I knew that it was one of those pivotal moments. I realised that I am a woman figuring it out. What I didn’t consider at the time, is that this isn’t a lesson for this year alone, but one for always. I’ll always be figuring things out. I think I thought that there might be a conclusion or a moment at some point in time when I’d get there. The destination. There would be a moment where everything would reveal itself, I’d have things all figured out and understand what it had all been for. 

But the journey is the destination in many ways. And the journey only ever continues onwards. Some parts make sense in retrospect. Others, come into view as you come round a bend. And a few, never quite become clear, blurred like trees that we whizz past on our road. 

Anyway, I digress. Here’s the last letter of 2021. There’s a question at the end, that I’d love to know your answer to. 

I wish you an easeful start to 2022. I’ll see you on the flip side (when I have proper internet access again). 

Sasha x

It started with a new about page for my website. 

There’s not much else likely to invoke peak levels of discomfort or procrastination than having to write about yourself. 

I’ve been writing words on the internet in some form for two years now, and I know that the page was asking for a label. I also wanted to make anyone who came across it (including myself), feel assured of who I was, what I knew and what I was offering. So I busied myself trying to find one so I could write it. Was I a writer? The journalling girl? A freelance content creator? Podcaster? What could I ground myself in, so that you might know who I am? 

Labels make us feel sure. They help us convince others that we know who we are and what we’re doing. It’s not even about who we are saying we are, but that we can present something concrete to the world and be understood and categorised. We are x. We are stable. Solid. Known. We apply them for others, but they can also be a comfort to (or distraction from?) ourselves. 

Something I’ve been exploring this year is asking myself who I am without my labels. Not an act of my own will necessarily, but prompted by the fact that I’ve had to come to terms with new and unfamiliar ones such as ‘single’ and ‘self-employed.’ On realising, that with the pulling up of the roots of each one that I could still stand, I found a little more gumption to test it out more and more. Because the question became less about letting all the labels go, and more about whether they were posts that could be kicked away, taking all I knew myself to be with them or if they were moorings that I could float off from but always return to. Ones that grounded without limiting.

Existing in a productivity culture that’s kinda, sorta in some form of recovery, many of our labels are wrapped up not in who we are but what we do. And often, who we do that thing for. So this has been my quiet pondering throughout the year: “who are you without your labels? At your core, when it’s just you and there is no doing, service or obligation to distract you.” 

I am a firm believer that what you ‘no’ can bring you as close to yourself as what you know. So in looking for this label, my no was just as important as my yes. 

I am not a coach. 

I am not a mentor.

I don’t give permission slips. How can I? While walking the same path of life as you? If anything, you might resonate with my thoughts and then the next bit… the permission-giving? That’s all you!

What I can tell you though, is that I am a woman figuring it out. And if you have resonated with my words and chosen to receive this letter, I’d hazard the guess that you are someone figuring it out too.

Here are a few of the things that I’ve figured out (or am still figuring out) this year: 

• That boundaries are one of the best forms of self-care in my tool kit. While it’s in the toolbox though, I’m still not the best at using it.
• That the exhale that comes after saying ‘no, I don’t want that’ or ‘I don’t want to’ is always, always better than forever holding your breath with the words on the tip of your tongue. You can’t do that forever. You need to breathe.
• That there are two different meanings when you say ‘I don’t care.’ One is free and genuine. The other is defensive and means entirely the opposite of what is coming out of your mouth. 
• That the feelings that we bat away and/or are told not to feel are the ones that, eventually, lead to freedom.
• That it’s quite hard to be selfish in a world that asks and frequently demands that we be selfless. It isn’t the bad thing it’s made out to be, and it is prudent to ask who some of this selflessness benefits. It may even be a survival tactic and be fast becoming of my more regular modes of being. 
• That this is my life. I wrote a podcast episode about the four words, ‘this is my life,’ and if you never listen to or read anything from me after this moment, click on the link to hear that episode for the first time or as an evergreen remindher.
• Your pace is the right one for you. It’s not a race. And even if it were, you’re the only one in it.
• That I am a woman figuring it out. And that that is the only label that I want to adhere to. 
• And that is the place I’m going to (continue) to write from, from now on: from the road. 
• From (what feels like) the everlasting midpoint of the work. 
• From one woman figuring it all out as I go, to you, doing the same.

So tell me (and I really mean that you can feel free to hit reply), what have you figured out this year?