Bigger Than A Resolution
what we really need for change
Hello, I am Danielle, a mother and devotee to Womb inHERitance. Here, on my substack, we explore Mothers as the Source. I write and share about how to live a life that is led and funded by the Feminine. Settle in with a mug of your favorite brew and let the womb take the lead.
I want to experience real, full-body change in the world through my resolution. I want the dreams I dream now to weave into every cell of my being and take me on a magical journey. I don’t want the limitations of resolve to restrain what my soul came here to do. I want to walk with time, intertwining with her threads to unravel and create alongside her.
I want something bigger than a resolution.
A Tiny Bit of History
I read a newsletter this morning that asked the question, “Are New Year’s resolutions a psy-op?” New Year’s resolutions date back to ancient Babylonia1. The Babylonians were still operating outside the Gregorian calendar, but their resolutions, and the Roman’s that followed, appeared to align with the idea of being good so that God would be good to them. In this way, they haven’t evolved much over the several thousand years that followed.
There is an inherent messaging of “not-enoughness” that accompanies the frequency of New Year’s resolutions—a sense of needing to do more, be more, have more, as though the answer to finding worth lies in resolving to improve ourselves.
A resolution asks us to draw a firm boundary to do, or not to do, something.
The number-one resolutions, time and again, appear to be healthy eating and weight loss goals. Number two is often financial or money ambitions, with relationships sliding into third place more often than not2.
If we’ve been resolving to create these shifts individually and collectively for at least the last several hundred years, wouldn’t the world look a bit different?
What interests me most is that we all want the same things, and yet the majority of people have struggled to enact real-world change within their family systems. Mothers who made body-related resolution goals have daughters who go on to do the same. Healthy habits we’ve resolved to build haven’t led anywhere except the highest rates of chronic illness3. Relationship resolutions haven’t solved much—we see family estrangement and divorce rates high4. Meanwhile, the majority of the world’s wealth is still held by a small elite.
Is the success of the New Year’s resolutions tradition mere folklore, or is it possible we can use an older system, one in tune with nature’s cycles and the laws of creation, to birth something new?
I don’t believe the individual is failing in their willpower. Rather, I believe the resolution egregore holds us in distraction and lack, keeping us from our true power as creator beings.
Another Path to Purpose
Choosing to Winter—to pause and listen to the song of the heart—is an essential pathway back to soul-led alignment. January is not the season for starting something new. In the midst of Wintering, we are still in our cocoon of darkness, the seed hibernating in the soil, waiting for the codes that will come to tell us it’s time to start growing.
Timing is important, but I don’t think it’s everything. We can choose a new way, any day, any time, but sometimes there are time codes we need to align with for our optimal flowering. I see the ouroboros when I reflect on the time in which we make our resolutions. The cyclical nature of life feeds itself. My grief portal of Autumn deeply informs and shapes what I dream of in the depths of Winter. What I can sense taking shape later this year is already present within me as I type this to you. Whenever you decide to make a promise to yourself, having sat with and contemplated what previous cycles have shown you, it will lead you further into yourself. Aligning with nature and organic time heals the body and psyche and sets you outside the overculture. We find clarity in who we are, independent of this system. The resolution to prove your value and worth fades. Instead, you experience a sense of belonging. Our purposefulness no longer feeds the egregore; instead, we come into deeper alignment with our soul path.
Alongside returning to organic time as a guide, we gain a fuller understanding of the birth cycle of creation. Working consciously with conception, gestation, birth/rebirth, and postpartum provides a map for what you hope to create—far more meaningful than the simple addition or subtraction of a resolution, which only provides the illusion of creation in our lives.
I want to invite you on this journey with me—beyond a single-step decision to cut something out or add something in—and instead, spiral deeper into time. I want you to feel the dilation that occurs when you operate outside the hustle-bustle culture, while simultaneously fully restructuring your life. This is about creating a change that lasts beyond February. Remember the creation codes held within your body. Feel your belonging to the Earth and the Universe.
No matter where you are in the cycles of time, this is the perfect moment to reconnect with the natural season the Earth is in. Right now, you are supported in drawing a Word of the Year or an essence that will guide you beyond the limitations of a resolution, calibrating you into an entirely new template of being.
Should you feel called to create with this essence throughout a year-long creation cycle, subscribe and follow the updates. I’ll be sharing this journey and offering practical ways you can work with the natural laws of creation to world-build.
You can also summon your own word of the year through the practices I shared here.
I really appreciate the idea of setting intentions; this has worked very well for me for the past decade or so. Rather than setting a hard boundary (and priming my system to anticipate a flip-the-switch result) I end up contemplating the practices around which to orient myself. This in turn feeds my more defined goals (which are usually the part I keep very private until they are accomplished). Love how you align this with the conception-gestation-birth-postpartum cycle!