Hello, 2023. . . I see you. I know you’re waiting for me to reflect on all the ways I wasn’t enough in 2022. I feel a sense of urgency arising to plan to do better, do more, and resolve to be the best version of myself possible. Well, 2023, I am sorry to disappoint. This nurse, mother, artist, dancer, writer, educator, and more is tired of spending any energy on not being enough. I am taking a different path this year and would love some company.

As I seek to care for myself this New Year, I am steering clear of resolutions formed around the idea that I am not enough. In the past, my resolutions were centered on scarcity, looking to fix the many ways I did not measure up to our societal version of being enough. This includes not doing enough, not eating healthy enough, not exercising enough, not creating enough, and simply not being enough. Well, I no longer have any time or desire to be defined by others’ expectations of me, nor do I have any desire to waste an ounce of my precious energy focusing on how I am not enough. 

This year I am skipping scarcity and embracing abundance by acknowledging and accepting all the ways I am enough in my perfectly imperfect humanity. From this soft place of acceptance, compassion, and care, I invite you to join me in asking ourselves a new question that focuses on our joy and our blessed needs for connection and community.

Knowing what I need has never come easy; as the oldest of four and a consistent sounding board for my mother, I learned quickly that caring for others before myself was intrinsically connected to my survival and guaranteed approval from those closest to me. With four mouths to feed and a brother with spina bifida, my ability to have very few needs gave me the prized label by my mother as “the easy one” or “the golden child.”  

This feedback loop created a grooved pathway in my brain that has carried me into adulthood, believing that the less I need, the more loveable I am. This core belief beset my heart at an early age and laid the foundation to build a life consistent with being the easy one in all my relationships, caring for others but asking for very little in return. What I didn’t realize was that through this behavior, I could not cross the chasm between my heart and mind, making it difficult to even know what I needed versus what everyone else needed. Since I could not define for myself what I needed, it was inevitably defined for me by others and sometimes without my best interest in mind. 

I am the founder of The Clinic, an arts and play-based immersive theater company that creates workshops and performances in hospital settings to raise awareness and offer resources to help develop personal, collective, and systemic resiliency or what I have coined as (Re)Brilliancy – a reminder that we are already resilient and brilliant, this is our baseline. One main component of these workshops includes answering the question, “What do you need to feel seen, heard, and cared for?” It is overwhelming the number of nurses, myself included, who have difficulty answering this question. Another surprising, yet not so surprising, finding is how many nurses say amid the workshop how sad it is that no one, including themselves, has ever asked them this question. In a profession where we spend our days tending to the needs of others, it feels quite normal not to give a second thought to what we need. In fact, we simply do not have time for it, leaving us with this chronic inability to connect to our needs on a daily basis.

As an adult, I have begun to unravel and disconnect the idea that my worth is directly related to being “the easy one.” I realized that to be human is to have needs. By downplaying my needs, I am downplaying my humanity. Our humanity is our greatest gift and a secret pathway into our soul. As I have learned to voice my needs more regularly, I have realized that my needs have always been present; I have either neglected them or got my needs met collaterally in ways that did not always honor who I was and who I am.

Would you like to join me and look at resolutions differently this year? Instead of creating resolutions based on not being enough, I wonder if we can be straight with ourselves and, let’s ask, what do we need in 2023 to feel seen, heard, and cared for? May this new question remind you of the importance of having needs, meeting these needs, asking for these needs to be met, and all the incredible ways you are enough and always have been.

P.S. 2023, I need more dance in my life. I have decided to teach a dance class starting in January because dance reminds me that I am worthy of experiencing joy, and joy, my friends, is worth sharing with others. If you are in Colorado, I hope you will come dance with me. 2023 I come at you dancing, dancing till I drop. 

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Tara Rynders, The Dancing Nurse, is the CEO and Founder of The Clinic, an arts and play-based immersive theater company that creates workshops and performances in hospital settings to prevent burnout, decrease secondary traumatic stress, and create more (Re)Brilliant and equitable healthcare systems. www.theclinicperformance.com

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