Letting go

On love, goals and New Year intentions

My new year collage

I trained as a writing coach back in 2013. At the time I was deeply unhappy, trapped in a very damaging relationship, caring for two young children (one of whom was very sick) and trying to work and write at the same time. I was struggling to keep my head above water but I was battling gamely on, determined to be one of those women who could have it all. It was a life-changing experience to be in that room in London, away from the relentless burden of mothering, with space for reflection amongst a group of wonderful, mostly older, mostly female, writers. Transformative to be coached by each of these writers in turn, over and over again, peeling back the layers, until it was impossible to avoid the stark reality of my situation, impossible to return without making changes to my life. I look back now and see that it was a major watershed moment. There was before and there was after. I can recognise several of those watershed times in my adult life now: motherhood, loss, the pandemic/family court years.

We were trained in the GROW model of coaching - a handy acronym for a useful process: establish the Goal, reflect on the Reality, explore Options and consider the Will of the client. It is a model that I still return to regularly, although, over time, I’ve adapted it to suit my own style of coaching. In each mini-coaching session, we’d begin in the same way - by setting a goal. What do you want? What is the aim? What’s the objective? What do you want more of? What do you want less of? What is the goal here? The rationale was clear. If you don’t know what you want, how can you set your intention and work towards it? If you haven’t set a goal, how can you know when you’ve achieved it?

New year is a natural time for goal setting. It’s an opportunity for a fresh start and a chance to set our intentions for the year ahead. Nothing has gone wrong yet and the calendar is full of blank pages, waiting to be filled. It’s exciting. Anything could happen! Eagerly, we set about filling those blank pages with lists and goals, with ideas about everything we want to achieve and we feel that, this year, things will be different. This is going to be the year that we’ll fulfil our ambitions and achieve those goals, this year our dreams will come true. I’m a writer; I love a blank page as much as anyone. I’m also a coach, so I love a list. I love a goal. New Year is a coach’s dream. And yet, for me, for the last twenty-five years, New Year has begun not with goals but with a collage.

I don’t know how it began. I’ve never been particularly artistic and never made a collage at any other time of year. Perhaps it began at the stage of adulthood when I realised that drinking in a crowded room at midnight was not my idea of fun. Perhaps it began as a salve in one of my lonely, single years. But, at some point, it became my new year ritual to light a fire or a candle, to play my favourite music and to spend quiet, contemplative hours cutting images and words from magazines and curating them into an image to represent my new year. It was way before instagram was full of people talking about vision boards and manifesting. It was just my own little ritual and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with quiet and with time spent alone during those precious hours. Instead of trying to force myself to conform to societal pressure to be out there, performing jollity, I was at peace, alone with my own thoughts.

This year, I settled in early on New Year’s Eve. The kids were busy with their own social lives and I found myself alone having agreed, reluctantly, to part from the man who has been a big and beautiful part of my life for the last two years. Our circumstances are too complex at the moment to move forward together and trying so hard to make it work has exhausted us both, so we’ve agreed to be loving friends for the time being. And so, I found myself at New Year in a liminal space, hovering on the brink of 2025 with no clear idea of my direction. I did what I’ve done for decades: I lit the fire and the candle and began cutting and ripping words and images, content to be at peace, alone, in my own contemplative space. The image above, assembled itself quickly and easily. I hung it on the wall above the space in my new house that I’ve claimed for morning writing, where two hooks were waiting. I keep returning to it and admiring it, reflecting on what it is telling me.

I notice that it is bigger than previous collages and more spacious. There are less goals and more invitations. When I look at it and compare it to previous collages, the lack of concrete goals is stark. There is no plan to find the love of my life; the last two years have taught me that I’m not currently in the right place for a full-time relationship and that I don’t have capacity to really love anyone other than myself and my kids at the moment. There is no plan to grow my business; I don’t have the energy to take on more work or more clients. There is no plan to get rich; I’m lucky that have what I need. Most stark to me to is the lack of writing goals. There is no plan to write a bestseller. The truth is that I’m no longer sure I want a publishing deal. Not at the moment. There is no aim to publish a poetry collection. No plan to win competitions. I don’t even have plans to grow my Substack. The reality, I realise, is that I’m tired of goals, tired of striving, tired, not of life, but of living beyond my capacity. This is a collage that is asking me to take a step back, to retreat, to relax, to breathe and to let go. To let go of those external markers of success. Maybe the time for goals will return but, for now, I just want to look after myself. It’s probably the most radical thing I’ve ever aspired to do!

Writing is still on there, of course. I love writing, and writing is like breathing to me. Swimming is on there, of course. Swimming is like breathing to me. Breathing itself is on there! I’ve recently discovered breathwork and vagal toning and my main aim this year is simply to recover from trauma. Art and dancing are on there because all creativity is healing and I feel like I need to find new ways to express myself that go beyond words. My new house, too, is a blank canvas, the whole thing a magnolia space, waiting to be coloured in. For the first time in my life, I’m excited about making a space my own. Work isn’t on there at all. Not because I won’t work but because I don’t need a reminder to work. In 2025, I’m returning home to myself, grounding myself and reflecting on what I want for my future. Central to my collage are these two phrases:

‘Working out what matters to you.’

‘You alone hold the secret to what calms and centres you, so trust your inner voice and seek out the environment you need.’

Especially in this social media age, it has become so hard to shut out the noise of the world telling us what we should need and desire and to listen to ourselves. I see it in the writers that I coach all the time, this list of aspirations that we’re told we must have. We’re being shouted at constantly to: ‘get a six figure book deal’, ‘build a six-figure coaching business’, ‘take control of your publishing journey’, ‘grow your following’, ‘build your platform’. What happened to just writing for the love it? What happened to living for living’s sake? To simply being? To letting things evolve naturally?

I don’t remember any of my goals from that first coaching course but I remember the exercise that was most powerful for me. I was being coached by my dear friend, Liz Flanagan, in the clean coaching method, an approach that uses metaphor to get to our unconscious desires. I remember then that, when asked what I wanted more of, I said ‘space’. It seems that hasn’t changed. As a working, lone parent, with high-needs children, burned out from stress, space is hard to come by. I remember the moment when I burst into tears when I came face to face with the reality of my situation. I returned and gradually I made changes that improved my life, for a time. The thing I most remember though is the advice of an older woman on the course. ‘Life is short, but wide,’ she said. ‘You can have it all. Just not all at once.’ Those words sank in deep. As women, we’re told we can have it all. We can’t. We can’t have successful careers and happy home lives, exciting sex lives, perfect homes, be brilliant friends and mothers and have artistic fulfilment. Sometimes, something has to give and, as mothers, it can’t be ourselves. Whilst talking to friends about my situation, this message comes through strongly, particularly in relation to love. ‘If we hadn’t been together for thirty years, I couldn’t fit my husband into my life,’ said one old friend. ‘I just don’t have the time for dating,’ said a friend who is a self-employed, single parent. We have to make choices at all stages of life about what we can prioritise. For now, I have to prioritise my kids and my health, to relax my expectations, plant my roots and grow from where I am. It might sound sad but maybe it can be excting too.

I’m not revoking all interest in goals. It’s great to have ideas about where we want to go, and envisaging our future can be energising and inspiring. But, sometimes, I wonder if it isn’t better to start where we are, to allow ourselves to create without ambition for the outcome, to write because we love words, to love without trying to force that love into a conventional shape, to let what will be, be. It’s fun to plan a journey but the best adventures, I believe, are unexpected. Who knows what will emerge if we build a new future one breath, one word, one image at a time, letting go of expectation? Something beautiful, perhaps.

If you’re Sheffield-based and would like to join me as I lead others in making New Year collages, join me at Sheffield Plate on Tuesday 6th Jan at 6.30pm. Tickets here.