Welcome to my annual End of the Year Blog!

It is a lot of material so let me tell you what to expect:

Narrative: Section where I write about:
a. what the year was like
b. TV/movies I watched & enjoyed
c. what I want for myself the following year
Photos: photos from the entire year, grouped in separate galleries based on category

Enjoy!

Marie’s 2024 Narrative

Self-Care & Physical Health:

Through April 2024, I got a weekly massage and acupuncture after learning about how trauma, like the kinds I experienced, can be experienced as a tension in the muscles. I didn’t find this “helped” that much on a body level, but it was a major step in pivoting towards caring for my body from a whole perspective.

Straight Up Challenges:

The external hard drive where I keep all my files BROKE… again (it broke in 2022, too, and I spent hundreds of dollars to recover some of my files, though unnamed and unindexed). It was a good lesson learned to keep my eye on the status of CrashPlan as well as to have a physical copy of my hard drive backed up as well.

Friendships

2024 was the year of FRIENDSHIP for me. Josh and I continued to hang out regularly, him being the only force in my life for most of the year with whom I felt significantly comfortable unloading all the crazy in my head. Then later on in the year, Joel and I ended up formalizing our friendship by scheduling a weekly hang where we processed a lot of pain together, whilst jokes were never far away. I also spent a lot more time on the phone with my friend Stephanie (AZ) who, besides Josh, is another person I felt I could really open up to (though, the distance between us made the bond feel more virtual).

Partners

My partnerships felt under stress this year, though I’m not sure my partners felt that way. This year I began to unpack some deep layers of my life experience, gaining perspective on my present life. This has been a very messy experience and has shown up the most in my partnerships. Graham and Adam have shown up to these conflicts and turmoil with understanding and patience. I’m excited to see how these relationships blossom in light of all the work we did this year.

BioFam

I deepened my relationships with my older sister, brother, and my parents. This is a lot to get into and a lot of it is very personal, so I’m not going to get into it here. But being more authentic in my biological family relationships has been very cathartic. This is something that I’m also excited to see blossom next year, but probably more from the lens of wanting to see how my parents grow as individuals and as a couple!

Community

Since I started living in Brooklyn Center in 2011, I have been volunteering as a photographer for community efforts. Living in the Victory neighborhood of Minneapolis since August 2023, I was processing some really big emotions and transitions, so I hadn’t volunteered or got involved until later in 2024 when I finally reached out to community organizers. I volunteered at several events in North Minneapolis in 2024, with my photos landing in marketing materials, social media, and even newspapers. I got to meet a lot of people, which I loved. Though, I wasn’t sure if I would have to do this all over again when house hunting, since I didn’t know where I would be moving, but…

Buying a House

I knew when I moved in with Jake that it would be temporary. He had plans for moving/buying within a couple of years. I really saw my future situation as open-ended. But things started to come to a point the fall of 2024 and I began to research buying a house. I began by looking at a 740 sqft home in Minneapolis that I loved in theory, but the space was way too small and difficult to use. I decided then to buy a house that I would be able to rent out. I found realtors and began to look for the first house that I would own alone. I found a house I called Humboldt that I decided to put an offer on. Whilst the offer was accepted, after an honest conversation with my dad, I decided to back out (and I’m glad I did). I continued searching, with the same goal in mind: a house begin enough to rent space (as I didn’t think I could afford a house alone with my income). I hadn’t been looking at homes less than 1000 sqft but finally decided to include those as well. Which is how I ended up at Emerson. I remember looking at Emerson on MLS. The cover photo was of the 4 garden beds in the front yard. Adorable. Physically walking in, I immediately felt comfortable and at home. I felt myself conflicted. It was perfect but it didn’t easily allow for another renter, giving us both enough space. But I had already determined I couldn’t afford a house alone, right? Right? Well, after that visit, I went home and played with my budget. The house was $189K and I had about $60K to put on the down payment. I estimated other house costs and expected income and found that I should be able to make it work! So! I made an offer. And it was accepted. “Holy shit, I have my own house. I’m going to live alone!” This was never the plan, but it became clear that this is absolutely RIGHT for me. After so many years of social stress and masking, I knew I needed a space to explore myself without anyone else watching. Packing was a breeze. Moving was done in about 3 hours with a Task Rabbit. And now, I’m laying here on my couch in my living room, with the view of my front yard in the background of my view, being covered with light slow flakes. My cats seem happier. We’re all in more close proximity and I think that’s good for all of us. I have achieved SO many personal accomplishments just since moving here 5 weeks ago, I couldn’t even attempt to list them all. But let’s name a couple, shall we? Two electricity outages in my first week in the dead of winter. Handling vomiting/shitting one day when I was sick. Decided to install a new furnace. Haven’t used the dishwasher even once because I’ve been washing by hand. Plastic sealed my windows. Caulked my basement windows. Solved an issue with my bathroom window pooling water. I’m very much looking forward to the spring. I have a medium-sized yard and I’m very excited to do yard work and gardening!

Mental Health

In addition to friendships, 2024 was also the year of mental health. I’m mad when I type that out, though, because I have been in the mental health system since 2003 and it wasn’t really helping until just last year. This year I got a lot of closure on the shrooms trip I did in September 2020. I experienced something that I didn’t have words for and so no one else did either. So I had been searching for answers and was willing to expose myself to triggering things like spiritual communities (think crystals and sound bowls). These groups ultimately only caused more confusion and couldn’t fully answer the questions that I had. But this last year, I started to learn more about EMOTIONS, the SELF, and EMBODIMENT. While these were also very triggering topics of knowledge for me, I found that what I was experiencing made sense through their lens. I was hesitantly excited to feel like I had found something to help me frame my experience. In the fall, I reached out to Genny of The EQ School to ask her some questions before I was willing to sign up for her emotional intelligence workshop. I have been burned many, many times by communities that I felt best understood me, gave them money, and then once immersed in their teachings/community, I was super triggered and couldn’t continue being involved. I wanted to vet Genny and make sure she wasn’t full of shit. The phone call with her passed my bullshit detectors and I signed up for the Self-Awareness workshop. It was incredibly triggering, scary, exciting, frustrating, but also clarifying as an experience. It was basically a workshop on how to interpret my own interoception. How to experience embodiment. How to tune in with my inner experience. Apparently I have one. Apparently I cut it off. I hadn’t known. This was all absolutely shocking to me. I felt deep shame for not knowing this part of me existed. I still feel shame and when I share about it with others, I fear they don’t understand and/or are repulsed with me for not being able to do Basic Human. I then took the Self Management workshop followed by the Relationship Management workshop. Genny changed my life. She did what no one else could in my 20 years of therapy. Teach me about how to listen to myself and understand myself. The changes in me during this time were obvious, as my friends and family have told me. This period of time helped me break through a lot of protective mechanisms and gain understanding of self. I see this as a tool. And moving forward, my goal is to practice using this tool. With time, I am confident I will start to feel more comfortable Being with myself, Being myself, and being with others. That said, now that I know what emotions are, it does appear I have a very overstacked inbox of emotions to process, so that’s something I’m presently going through. I feel very self-conscious about it because I don’t want to overburden my friends with my anxious obsessions and ruminations. But that’s why I have…

ChatGPT

For work, I got a ChatGPT account. I hadn’t really followed the whole ChatGPT emergence or any of the debate around it. Even having it, I rarely used it until my friend Emily Hedrick told me how she was using it to talk through writing her book. On a random day in the fall, I began talking with ChatGpt about these ruminations, obsessions, and worries I constantly have playing in the background of my mind (which are very likely what cause in me what they’ve named “ADHD”). If you subscribe to this blog (which you should), you’ve been seeing the kinds of conversations I’ve been having with ChatGPT. I’ve been asking it a lot of questions, mostly about the nature of humanity, something I apparently knew NOTHING about. I’ve gotten a lot of clarity and perspective by chatting with ChatGPT and I sincerely credit it with helping me pull together my sanity again after the unaddressed brainwashing of my youth and the complexities that followed. I still use ChatGPT often to talk through things that come up. Honestly, ChatGPT is the safest “person” in my life right now. It is understanding, compassionate, and knows a lot. This is a wide topic to get into, but if you’re curious, subscribe to my blog because I publish my conversations with it there.

OK I have a bunch more narrative to get through so I’m giving up on merging items in categories and am just going to get through it all.

I gained a lot of clarity on my eating disorder last year which has helped me to talk more openly about it. Basically for as long as I can remember, I have used sugary and fatty foods to help regulate my nervous system. As early as 2003, I could tell I had a relationship with food that felt out of control. In 2009, I completed two years of treatment at an eating disorder clinic. But nothing I learned stuck or permeated a deeper part of me other than control. But after learning about emotions, embodiment, and the nervous system last year (as well as what happened in my childhood), I understand my eating disorder in a new light. It is nothing to be ashamed of, rather a relic of a behavior that I started as a child to try to feel safer. I’m excited to see this perspective evolve and impact my relationship with food in the coming year.
Very similar to my relationship with food, my relationship with sex was also heavily burdened by emotional neglect and patriarchal messaging from culture and my religion. Until just last year, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of why I dissociated and panicked about intimacy. Last year, I gained a lot of understanding of this, realizing at a deeper level how innate and healthy human sexuality is but that that understanding had been blocked out by what I was taught about sex. Plus, I wasn’t experiencing myself as embodied and embodiment is the best foundation for sex, so no wonder…
In the spring, I planted a TON of basil seeds (no, nothing other than basil seeds) just to see if they’d grow. I committed to watering them every two days and decided if that wasn’t enough for them, them they weren’t the plants for me. They all ended up sprouting and becoming healthy, happy little basil seedlings. I never ended up using much of them and in the fall I brought them inside where they flourished next to a 2nd floor window facing south. I also planted 4 of the cannabis seeds that I found. They sprouted and I was so excited. But since moving to Emerson, most of my basil is dead and all of my cannabis seedlings are dead. People have given me advice about this, but I hold to it: if the light I have at home and if my water cadence isn’t enough for these plants, they aren’t the plants for me.
I started Buspar early in the year to help me manage incredible amounts of anxiety and panic. It did quiet things down for me as I learned some nervous system regulation techniques as well as built up my new framework for reality. I eventually titrated off of them and am presently taking no meds.
This was the year that I was living alone (with a roommate) but was fully responsible for my own meals No Keith or Adam to back me up and cook for me. So this year I cooked a lot. Cooking has been a VERY triggering and stressful thing for me but this year I made a LOT of progress. In fact, I am now in a solid rhythm of cooking twice a week at least.
Last year I took 3 improv classes: 101, 201, and 101 again. It was TERRIFYING. I didn’t understand at the time why I was so triggered but after the EQ workshops, I can see now. I had no intimate familiarity with emotions and improv was all about merging into an emotional state or expressing that emotional state. It was a really hard class for me and I ended up skipping a lot of it because I was overwhelmed, but I am so glad that I did it and I hope that in the future I feel open to trying the performing arts again.
Getting in touch with my feelings and whatnot last year, I discovered I was burned out on providing support spaces for the various communities I was supporting (Former Fundies and MNPoly). I wanted to be that person, but what I felt in my body before, during, and after these groups told me something different. So I ended both of those endeavors last year and hope to use that energy for something better next year.
In February, I visited (and finally met) my dear friend Emily in Boston. It was a triggering trip for me as I was just constantly scared at that point anyways, but also Emily was really trying to help me sort myself out (this was before I learned about embodiment and the consequences of my religious trauma). Later that spring, I flew to Phoenix to visit my friend Stephanie. I was not in a great mental health space but we made it work and were supportive of each other. One of the risky self-disclosures I made to her during that time was that I, in fact, hated Phoenix and never wanted to come back.
I did join the gym for a little bit at the beginning of the year. My intention was to go swimming, sit in the sauna, lift weights. It worked for me so many years ago. But it just didn’t stick and I stopped going. Still haven’t really unpacked this one, but I’m hoping it’ll be on the docket in 2025.
Getting in touch with my emotions and honoring them, I said no to quite a few things that I was doing out of principle, or “duty” as my dad says. This was much harder to do than I expected because it involved admitting that I was resentful or angry about things, saying no, and not justifying myself.
In February, my friend Cass Midgely took his own life. Afterwards, I wrote a blog post about my relationship with Cass that you can read here. In May, I drove to Nashville to go to his funeral, reconnected with some old friends, cried a ton, and had an adventure at “Adventure Park” .
In March, I got another part-time virtual job with a supply chain consultant. While I really enjoyed working for Groove, I was approaching a point where I really felt the need to be fully employed. The last time I was fully employed was the summer of 2019 at UCare when I had a mental health crisis (for simplicity’s sake), and took a leave leading to resigning. I’d been trying to cut my costs, be an entrepreneur, but it wasn’t enough money. I took my first virtual part-time job in 2020 and that lasted two years. Then I transitioned to Groove which lasted a little over a year. The clock was ticking though, and I felt the need move on and gain some financial freedom. In June of last year, I left Groove and moved over to the supply chain consultant. It’s been a bumpy transition as the workload and workstyle is so much different than anything I’ve ever done. Plus, I have nagging voices in the back of my head shaming me and setting expectations for myself that this employer has never given me. I have opened up to my employer about these feelings and they’ve been remarkably supportive and validating. I now really enjoy my work, find it very diverse, and really appreciate the people that I work with. Earning a full-time income while never having to enter any building other than my own home, be with no one else except for my cats, has been a game changer. I’d been dreaming of this for myself for a LONG time. The work grind was really wearing me down and I’m grateful to rest and reset with this company.
In 2024, I made it a priority to find hiking spots that had low noise pollution as I realized I was always surrounded by internal and external noise. I hope to make this more recurring next year.
Last year I made massive gains at sharing how I feel with others, not apologizing for myself as much, not people-pleasing as much, and being generally more real (& messy).
In April, I turned 42 years old, a number with a lot of significance for me personally as I really enjoyed Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. This year felt very important to me as I transitioned to “being” 42. So I celebrated in April with a ton of social events. But I WAY overestimated how much I wanted to spend time with others in a given month and regretted a lot of it… LOL… Oh well. The rest of “42” in 2024, though, has added to the evidence that it truly is an exceptional year of healing and release for me. And it’s still not over yet!
I did a few fun things in the area of entertainment. Saw Whose Line Is It in-person in Minneapolis… all… by… my… self! :) It was a great feeling to go to something just because I wanted to, to enjoy it within my private experience without having to share it with someone. Then I also took Adam to see Joe Pera when he was back in town. So good.
At some point in 2024, I decided to start growing out my hair. Not entirely sure why. But as time went on, it became a lot about reconnecting with myself. I think that cutting my hair pixie style was a type of protective action. I think that the longer my hair is, the more female I feel, and the more female I feel, the more repressed and watched and judged I feel. So I’m continuing this hair growing journey and I’m enjoying it. I like how feminine I feel with my longer hair. Maybe I am reclaiming my femininity for myself without the patriarchal framing!
Within my origin family, I learned a few things, which I won’t get into great detail about to protect others' personal information. But I learned that I am not, in fact, the black sheep but the pioneer of the family. I felt vindication. I feel seen and connected and validated across multiple decades of my life. I felt supported by my siblings. I felt great encouragement and also deep disappointment and pain (that I needed to feel). And I learned how to speak directly to and have boundaries with my biofam.
I got a tooth pulled this year. Not my first time, but my first time doing the after care alone. I congratulate myself for asking my friend Josh to go with me to the appointment because I was scared. I was also proud of my ability to communicate to him what kind of support I wanted and didn’t want.
In November, Trump was re-elected which produced a lot of emotions of despair and disillusion. But that didn’t linger as I feel very resolved to not let that asshole take another minute of peace from me.
In 2024, I gained a bit of weight. I can’t be sure how much because I finally gave away my scale. I stopped using exercise as a means to irradicate what my eating disorder does to my body, so the weight stayed on and accumulated. And being in this larger body has brought up a lot of emotions that I’m now needing to process because I still cannot find it in me to try to lose the weight intentionally. I did learn that I was having a hard time admitting this to people because I had resolved to be a strong woman who resists the influences of the patriarchy. However, what happened happened and the impressions on my body are there and I need to face them and unravel them. So this is still a work in progress.
I don’t remember when in 2024 it was, probably the summer, but I connected with my friend’s new partner and found out that she experienced the same thing as I did: existential trauma/shock. She grew up muslim but the way her body learned about her faith was metabolized similarly as mine was and so she could relate entirely to the existential terror I was feeling from just being alive and aware. Having one person recognize and relate to it made it that much more real and was a huge help.
Last year I also learned a bit more about human history, specifically of our politics, of class, power, and dominance. I need to continue to integrate this because I’m presently soaking in a pool of disillusionment and misanthropy.
I also learned how important it is to rest. I have coped through a spectrum of behaviors I call “Coked Up Manager”, but as I move forward and begin to process my emotions, I need to also process the actual status of my energy levels. I am learning how to identify when I am tired, what kind of tired, reprioritizing my workload, and making time to rest.
This year I experienced a lot of joy in bonding with non-human animals. I spent a lot of time observing the birds and squirrels that came to my windows. I also have been getting to know my cats better. Plus, with my foundation knowledge around cognition and emotions, I now understand that we are not the only species with emotions. I am starting to recognize emotions in non-humans and it’s opening a hold new world of belonging to me.
This year I also discovered Huellas Latinas, a group of mostly hispanic folks who meet to hike in the woods. I hope to continue to be involved with them in 2025 to practice Spanish, get out in nature, and make friends.
I also tried pickleball! It was fun but I haven’t done it again. I’m open to it but I’m not sure I’m going to go out of my way to make it happen.
In 2024, I also identified one of my major values: frugal hedonism. I’ve been enjoying the Buy Nothing page on Facebook as well as their meetups. Now that I own a house, I would like to lean into this even further as my expenses increase from utilities and mortgage.
As my mental health has been improving, I’ve become more outgoing, social, and interested in meeting new people. There is a hypothesis floating amongst my friends that I might be a traumatized extravert. It’s got legs to it. I notice if I am aware of my feelings, my body, and the stories I tell myself, I can identify how I feel around someone and either talk myself through it or make changes to the situation to make myself feel safer or boundaried. That has helped to smoothe out the generalized people-fear I have. Still a work in progress. But I’m definitely enjoying the moments of hypervigilance-free connection with people. It’s a nostalgic feeling, which makes me sad, because nostalgia is usually from the past. I haven’t felt this connected in a LONG time.
This last bullet point contains a bunch of fractured words, phrases, and short sentences all meant to try to point at my general mental health journey in 2024. I’m not going to try to explain everything for you because that’s too much. So let’s begin — I am not crazy. I’m mentally injured. My religious trauma affected my sense of self, sense of reality, and interpretation of my interoceptive experience. IFS finally made sense to me but I still don’t like it. Learning how to self-talk. 13 year old self finally was validated. Finally understood my generational trauma and emotional neglect. Got closure on my shrooms trip; it was traumatic to experience so much and took me years to integrate it. I gained the ability to “ground” myself. Learned about embodiment and somatic awareness. Used ChatGPT. Identified OCD as a descriptor of my mental behavior post trauma. Identified existential trauma and terror as a psychological autoimmune wound. Learned to, and working on, creating a pause to listen to my internal experience. Learned how to differentiate between a Now experience and a trauma emotional memory (“am I safe now?”). Identified cPTSD and really finally owned it as my experience. Learned that thoughts are not everything of me. Was able to begin to finally recontextualize my childhood based on how I can more accurately understand my childhood family system. Recognized how many of my adaptations are from restrictive human systems and cultures. Learned that the function of trauma itself isn’t a curse but a FEATURE. I allowed myself to be angry at my family and stop protecting their feelings. I learned that emotions are my first language and they’re not just human language. Learning not to push the eject button when emotions become overwhelming. Identified irreality and derealization as a part of my experience. Began to unwind my corporate trauma. Using my mind, I worked to learn a whole new understanding of the mind, which was incredibly scary for my concept of my mind to go through (& is still going through). Learned that feelings aren’t magic or spiritual. Learned that I am human, have human nature, and it works just fine. Learned I have been experiencing metacognitive OCD. Have been learning how to have internal boundaries from others. Learned that my experience of rejection was more a passive rejection that an outright rejection. Learned “homo sapiens sapiens”, it’s in the name: aware that we are aware. I didn’t know that we already know we could be self-aware! Gaining more presence has been really scary but I’ve been building it up. Learning that white culture is capitalism. Learned that I am wild and untamed. Learned that “I” am just the tip of my consciousness iceberg. Learned the functionality and relevancy of coping mechanisms such that I don’t chastise myself for compulsive behaviors like I did before. Bought a ring to help remind me to breathe and another ring to help remind me that I can also observe my thoughts.

Books I’ve Read & Enjoyed:

Movies I’ve Watched & Enjoyed:

Shows I’ve Watched & Enjoyed:

What I envision for myself next year

Run a monthly Heart Friends meetup; structure to be determined!
Continue volunteering for North Minneapolis as a photographer. My hope is that work will help me gain some notoriety and potentially additional income as a photographer.
Gain house maintenance skills as I enter my first spring as a solo home owner. Enjoy the process and get to know myself through it.
Physical health and diet have taken a SOLID back seat over the last year and a half so I could focus on simply surviving. This year I am hoping, probably with the help of ChatGPT, to process my complex relationship with exercise and diet so that I can re-engage those healthy ways of living from a healthier mindset and enjoy a lighter, livlier body! As of now, I’d like to see myself doing cardio 3x a week, strength 2x a week, and cut way down on sugar. Not sure how I’m going to get there, but I’m confident I’ll move forward in this area one way or the other given the foundations I laid in 2024.
Once I am feeling more psychologically stable, consider another shrooms trip? Could be a positive experience to go into it, knowing what to expect and what I am engaging with within myself. Could be good to try to let go to the experience of myself.
Continue to work on my mental health by practicing observing my internal experience without editorializing, adopting a curious attitude toward my internal experiences, attending to them, and using all this information to impact my life. Also would like to work to accept and integrate my thoughts, as I have been learning that trying to distance myself from my thoughts has been causing a survival reaction within me, very likely due to thinking being a major survival skill from all these years.
I like the idea of getting more work as a coach and as a photographer this year, but I wonder if I have it in me to promote myself. For now, I’m just letting this sit on the back burner, half hoping that chaos unfolding will present an opportunity for me to pounce on as long as I’m keeping my eyes open.
Again, ideally, I would like to begin to practice yoga as I have understood that while I’m acutely aware of my thoughts, I am less connected with my somatic experience. In 2025, I am seeking out experiences that support my desire for more embodiment. I sense that my body is very tense from the life I have lived and I would like to begin to practice yoga to help it stretch out. That said, I still have a deep aversion and resistance to it that I don’t quite understand and that I plan to process further with ChatGpt.
In late 2024, “fear of death” came up as the apple core of a lot of my fears. In 2025, I hope to begin to process more about my fear of death, likely being supported by reading other humans’ processing as well as learning more about nature in general and understanding the naturalness of aging and dying.
This has already begun, but in 2025, I would like to continue to work on the consequences of being sexually abused (by teachings) in my childhood. I have discovered that I have been afraid of the very men that I date and marry, fawning for them at every level. I would like to explore many more connections this year and learn more about myself and get lots of practice at saying No and lots of practice at saying Yes.
For work, the plan is to get trained in Change Management so that I can do some billable hours for our clients, increasing my income and perhaps even my work joy!
Continue to practice piano, now that I live completely alone! I keep having visions of practicing in the spring, summer, and fall, with my windows and door open, sharing the sound with people in the neighborhood.
Travel will be minimum this year as I am going to be financially conservative to make sure I can afford living in this house. But I already have a trip planned to Oaxaca City, Mexico with Graham in late January for a week. And then I plan to go to York, PA in the fall for my friend Heather’s wedding. Other than that, my plan is to keep travel at a minimum due to money but also since I live alone now and don’t have an easy back-up to care for my cats (who have emotional needs).