First off, happy 2024!

However you rang in the new year, I hope it was meaningful and happy. 

As we step into a new year, I thought it would be inspirational & helpful to share with you what my work is really about.

In other words, what my biggest stealth mission is for doing everything I do, for all my offerings and trainings and writing and everything.

Of course, on the very important surface level, my work is about raising the bar of the transformational industry and sharing as much wisdom as I can about how to go deeper and more powerful, and more ethical in all of your client work. 

So that you can co-create even better results for your clients as you help them through their stickiest obstacles.

So that you can feel incredibly confident and happy, knowing you’re doing incredible client work that is trauma-informed.

So that your stellar client work helps you grow your business through referrals, renewals, and building your reputation.

But….this is all just one level of the big WHY behind why I am so obsessed with my work and constantly looking to find more ways to share it with you.

The deeper reason I do everything I do, the greater mission…it has to do with something even bigger than incredible coaching techniques and client work.

All of the work I share, at its core, is about learning to love yourself more deeply.

It’s about learning how to have much more compassion and way less shame about the parts of you or your experiences that you’ve decided are bad or wrong, or shameful.

It’s about not just giving lip service to ALL of you but actually, for real, accepting and loving all of you.

This isn’t an easy feat, especially with all the cultural messaging we all swim in that says that one type of person is better than another type of person, or one type of body is better than another body, or that there is a hierarchy in human value when it comes to success.

This also isn’t an easy feat when we are told that it’s not right, it’s downright shameful to be angry, sad, too powerful, too sexual, wanting too much, not wanting to do everything for others etc., etc., etc.

(I’m thinking of America Ferrera’s incredible monologue in the Barbie movie as I write the above line; I just re-watched the movie recently!).

In essence, so many of us….most of us….no matter how successful or not successful we think we are (or culture thinks we are), are walking around feeling there is something wrong with us….feeling not all of us are lovable or acceptable…and that it’s either just a matter of time before we’re found out to be the not OK people that we are, or…we are hating on ourselves or parts of ourselves. Always.

And after a while, we start to think it’s just normal to feel this way. For us only of course. (We don’t remember that almost everybody feels this way, and so we think we’re alone in all of it and are ashamed for feeling this way on top of everything else we feel ashamed about. Good times.)

Anyway, I share all of this not to depress you on New Year’s day….but instead to inspire you on New Year’s Day.

Why?

Because it doesn’t have to be this way.

I know because not only have I devoted the last 20+ years of my life to unraveling this for myself….but I’ve witnessed my clients on the sacred journey of reclaiming more of who they are and learning to accept and love more of themselves. (This is what working with Shadow is all about).

Everything – and I mean everything – I teach & share comes back to this. Comes back to learning how to love more and more of yourself and your life and experience, even when every part of culture tells you (in subtle and not subtle ways) not to.

Is it a magic pill? Am I “cured” of all of this? Heck no! 

It is always a work in progress. Always. I make forward strides in beautiful ways, and then sometimes, I back slide. And then I come back to doing the work.

But nevertheless, even though it’s a lifetime of work, it is so well worth it. 

In my book, it’s the most important and sacred work that anyone can do. 

For ourselves, for our families, for our communities, for our clients, for culture.

(Because, YES, doing the deep Shadow work of learning to reclaim and love all your parts IS an act of resistance to the cultural messages that would otherwise tell you that you are not OK, not enough, not acceptable, not lovable, not worthy.)

And here’s the other thing: when we do this work in community, it becomes even more powerful.

Why?

Because we see that we’re not alone in our shame, in what we’ve been doing wrong about ourselves. Because we get to have more of our own humanity when we see the humanity in others. It’s really quite magical. (Not a magic pill, but magical).

So, all this being said, here is my New Year’s wish for you:

May 2024 be the year that you reclaim more of yourself.

May it be the year that you learn to love all the parts of you, even the ones you’ve spent a lifetime believing are bad or wrong or loser-ish or not OK.

May this be the year that the next level of shame dissolves for you so that you don’t spend so much energy beating yourself up.

And, in this coming year, may you find the superpowers embedded in your Shadows. May you see the power inside of yourself that you’ve been denying all this time and learn to use it for good. For yourself. For the world.

Finally, may all of the ways you learn to love yourself more deeply help you love others more deeply, and accept others with more compassion. So that you spread all of this like a miracle.

So, so much love to you and wishes for an incredible 2024,

Joanna