What Are You Still Carrying Into the New Year?

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and a time of celebration, reflection, renewal, and beginning again. It is a time to pause at the threshold of what has been and what is yet to come. A time to release what is no longer. To make peace with what was. To celebrate what is coming. And perhaps, in the quiet space of introspection, a time to ask ourselves a simple question: What am I still carrying that I no longer need to take with me?

At The Threshold

There is something about the turning points of a year or season, that naturally invites us to look back. Not necessarily to relive everything that has happened, but to notice what has stayed with us. What has shaped us. What has softened us. What has strengthened us. And maybe what has remained long after its purpose was served.

For me, this Rosh Hashanah feels like an invitation to look a little more honestly at those things. Not with judgment or with shame — but with curiosity. Because sometimes the things we carry the longest are not necessarily the things we still need.

Making Room In Our Own Home

Lately, my husband and I have been doing some clearing of our own. As we've been actively doing the sacred internal work, we've also found ourselves looking around our home a little differently. This year we're decluttering and purging. Not just re organizing things or moving them from one place to another, but actually letting things go. I have already thrown away 3 garbage bags worth of shit.

This year, however, we also decided it was time to let go of our beautiful Williams Sonoma Lunar New Year plates. We’ve had them for almost eight years and were a gift from his parents. It was difficult and emotional for me to let them go. Not only were they very cool and beautiful — they have also been apart of countless meals, ordinary evening, celebrations, Shabbat, holidays, conversations, laughter, and nourishment shared between us and those who sat at our table.

But they were chipped and worn down— showing the evidence of their years of use. And at some point, we realized that beautiful or not, they had reached the end of their usefulness. It was the perfect time to do this as we enter into the Jewish New Year. It also made me begin to wonder about something much deeper. What does it do to us energetically when we continue to nourish ourselves on something that is chipped, worn, or no longer whole?

Not just the plates but everything. That question has stayed with me. What else do we continue using, holding, living with, wearing or carrying simply because it has been with us for so long? What happens when we keep serving ourselves from things that have already reached the end of their purpose or are broken? And the more we clear, the more I notice how much the energy has shifted within our home.

The Wounds We Carry

Sometimes we also have to be willing to look beyond the scars or the chips. Not just at the wound itself, but at the mark it left behind. The place that healed enough to stop hurting every day, but never quite fully disappeared. The place you stopped noticing until something—or someone—brushed against it. And suddenly, there it is.

A reaction that feels bigger than the moment. A familiar emotion appearing where it doesn't seem to belong. A defensiveness you didn't expect to arise. A hurt that seems to have very little to do with what is actually happening in the moment. Maybe something in the present simply touched against something that happened a very long time ago. And there is something both humbling and liberating about recognizing that.

Because sometimes the person standing in front of us isn't the person who hurt us. The moment happening now isn't the moment that happened then. But an old wound doesn't always know the difference. It simply knows that something feels familiar — finding its way into today.

The practice of awareness is something we give to ourself. It has the ability to extend the offering of grace and compassion. A place to be human and to give ourselves the room of one of the quietest forms of self-love.

What Comes With Me

This is where I am finding the deeper work of reflection, renewal, letting go and celebration so sacred and rewarding. The lessons. The wisdom. The love. The laughter. The people who have shaped me. The experiences that have stretched me. The parts of myself that have grown stronger because of what I've lived through. The gratitude. All of it has a place.

But not every wound needs to become a souvenir. Not every pain needs to come with me. Not every defense needs another year of employment. Some things can simply be thanked for what they once did and gently released. I can acknowledge what marked me without allowing it to continue defining me. I can remember without reliving. I can forgive without forgetting. I can honor where I've been without making it responsible for where I'm going. And perhaps that is the real work of beginning again.

Not deciding who I should become. But becoming more intentional about what I carry forward. What deserves my energy and my attention, what deserves a place in the life I am creating now— and what has simply been taking up space because I haven't yet given myself permission to let it go? I am learning that I don't have to answer all of those questions perfectly. I simply have to become willing to become aware and notice what I'm ready to let go of.

A Quiet Beginning

This Rosh Hashanah or Autumn season, I invite you to consciously choose to make some room. To make room in your home, in your heart, in your mind, and in your life. Room for softness. Room for clarity. Room for forgiveness. Room for possibility. Room for whatever comes next.

Giving yourself permission to release the feelings or things that are no longer need. Even when they are habitual. Even when they are familiar. Even when some small part of you still believes they are protecting you. You can choose differently now. You can give yourself a break. You can love yourself enough to stop carrying yesterday's pain into today's life.

May the year ahead be a little lighter. May it be clearer. May there be more room for what matters. May we have the courage to look honestly at what has marked us, the compassion to embrace all that we have been, and the freedom to release what we no longer need to carry. And may we be open enough to recognize what belongs when it arrives.

L'Shanah Tovah.