It’s the first day of a new year and I am faced with determining what feet I plan to step forward with as the year progresses.

To begin with I am going to continue to work to grow comfortable in my new skin, to feel okay about wanting to stay in instead of going out, to accept my limitations and celebrate my successes even if they feel small.

I am going to keep working on being okay talking about what is going on with me. I want to shrug off the stigma of disability, illness, and mental illness and embrace the fact that my life, while filled with amazing people and wonderful moments, is hard. I want to work to remember that it is okay to talk about the hard and I want to resist the urge to sweep it under the conversational carpet and pretend everything is fine.

I want to get better and believing that the people in my life understand and love me anyway. I keep being surprised by how accommodating and supportive people are. The narrative in my head about my limitations is so negative at times I think I transfer those feelings of resentment or impatience to others around me. It’s not fair to them or to me as most of the people in my life, if not all of them, actually really get that I am traveling a road that differs from theirs. They are happy to cross my road when they can and let me cross theirs when I can but they aren’t dismissing me because I am on a different path. They aren’t rolling their eyes behind my back and talking about how I must be faking it, they aren’t shutting me out of their lives because I can’t participate socially as much as they do. They are just allowing me to set the pace and join in when I can.

I believe my social anxiety will reduce dramatically once I allow myself to fully recognize these truths. Once I am able to fully appreciate my victories and limitations, once I am better able to talk about them, and once I am seeing people’s support instead of fearing their dismissal I think I will have a healthier outlook on life.

So those are my resolutions for self-care this year. It’s a tough set of things to accomplish but it’s going to be better for me than resolving to lose 10 pounds, especially as I’m eating snickerdoodles while I write this post.