This morning, I cried.

Flashes of this entire past year—2020—flashed as pictures in my mind: How much I have struggled. How strongly I have pushed myself to get up when I fell down. How many times I wanted to give up on my dreams. How lonely I felt at times, going through the pandemic away from my loved ones. Being among friends who struggled more than me but pushed harder than I did, inspired me.

I had to wake up every day go to the dance studio I work at, and I would train and work for seven to eight hours a day. It was the only thing that kept me sane during this insane year—that ends today.

Dancing was the only thing that gave me hope, inspiration, and encouragement that I could thrive even amongst the darkest of days and weeks and months.

I never let my mind fall into fear.

I choose not to believe in the pandemic. I know this sounds insane, but I just didn’t believe it. I refused to believe it.

And I kept dancing.

I got sick with the common cold a few times, and I refused to believe I had COVID-19. I believed I was healthy, and healthy I stayed.

Emotionally, this year has cracked me open so many times. I did not want to open this much, but it opened me nonetheless.

My heart got cracked open even more; for the first time, I learned how to allow myself to feel. As a woman, I needed to feel it all the way to my core.

As a woman, I learned that to honor my feminine side, I need to feel and honor all my emotions as precious and magical, instead of seeing them as blocks or weakness.

I learned how to redefine what being a woman meant.

It’s has been such a messy, f*cked up, confusing process of uncovering parts of my self, but fulfilling and much needed in order for me to come to terms with who I really am.

This year taught me that when life knocks you down like a boxer in a ring, it does so to equip you with what you need to thrive, not only survive. Imagine life being a boxer in one corner of the ring and you on the other. She is there like a dark ghost boxer inviting you into the unknown, and she sits to see if you are going to stay down on the ground.

What would your choice be?

I refused to stay down.

I got back up thousands of times after each fall: each emotional, mental, and physical fall.

I cried so many times and told my best friend I didn’t know what to do anymore. I just couldn’t. She would sit in front of me, look deeply into my teary eyes, then she would touch my hand and say, “Allow the darkness to pass through you. Allow it to go, but don’t believe in it.”

I could sense her own emotional roller coaster, but she had a way of keeping me calm when I was touching rock bottom.

Yes, it happens to the strongest of us. The stronger you are, the deeper your rock bottom. It’s simple. But, who did not fall on the ground this year and cry bitter tears?

I believe everyone did, in one way or another—maybe secretly alone. Everyone cried this year, more than once. Everyone was out of their mind, more than once. Everyone failed to box life back on the boxing ring.

But most of us made it through; here we are heading into a new year.

I have big dreams for this year.

No, I won’t believe you if you tell me this isn’t going to be easy; it is going to be as easy as we make it.

What we learned in 2020, we need to bring with us in 2021.

We learned self-sufficiency. We learn self-healing. We learned resilience. We learned to trust in the unknown.

We learned to allow life to equip us with capabilities we didn’t know we possessed, to navigate the darkest of times.

Perhaps, we learned how to love better, how to be more present with each other, how to appreciate people in our lives who have kept us sane and safe.

We learned how to honor our boundaries. We learned a lot about ourselves: how we deal with the unknown, with pain, with darkness.

We are ready to step into 2021 with fresh and humble eyes.

I believe this is going to be the year of my life when what I have longed for most is easily manifested into my existence.

I speak it into the universe. Because if there is one thing I’ve had to learn over and over again, it is this: I am not only human; there are magical powers within my soul.

I had to go through a lot of inner darkness to learn how my spirit lifts me up from the ocean of dark mud.

What are you going to speak into the universe this year?