Dear January 2022 Mandi,

You are about to begin your year by having the most major and significant physical event that you’ve yet to encounter happen to you: your skin removal surgery.

No amount of preparation will prepare you for the physical, mental and emotional pain of releasing not only the 30lbs of excess tissue that was removed…but also what that weight and skin represented as a physical manifestation of how you had absorbed and held onto the literal weight and heaviness of everyone around you (as well as yourself) for years and years.

You will spend all this next year releasing yourself from the role of emotional and spiritual garbage dump. Allowing the version of you who would let anyone and everyone bring their stress, weariness, sadness, pain and frustration to leave on your heart and ask for help fixing it (only to bounce and vanish when they felt better, or worse, end up downplaying or resenting you for wanting or needing you in the first place) to rest.

You will finally accept that it’s been YOU all along who has allowed you to be treated that way, and you will spend this entire year slowly (and reluctantly) putting to death every false identity (and their respective behaviors and patterns) that you have unknowingly hung all of your worth and value upon.

The more you show up for yourself and disregard how uncomfortable it makes you and others feel to change the “way you’ve always been”…it will cause you to lose connection with even more people than you could have known…and at times losing faith in the whole process.

This will include family.

This will include friends whom you never would have expected.

It will include your “job” as a “coach” and your entire identity as a professional fitness and wellness person…

Even various projects and opportunities that you have lent your passion, talent and energy to with and for others, have had to be pruned away…to stop you from leaking out all of your own precious energy for yourself and your own family and whatever it is that’s coming for you next.

It will be hard.

You will be angry.

You will grieve for all of the younger “yous” who didn’t have the safety or right to grieve, protest, emote or stand up for herself.

You will be confused since this was supposed to be the year that you’d “elevate”.

Instead it has felt like a year of loss and death…as you come to realize that everything that has had to go was because you were only holding onto it to keep trying to PROVE yourself to everyone.

You will learn that the more you release, the less you have to prove…and that is the path of TRUE freedom.

I’m the midst of it all, you will travel around the US 7 times this year, being given the opportunity to lead conversations about all of these important things that seem like everyone else is dealing with too.

You will make new connections with amazing new people and receive revelations that will blow your mind.

You will start the damn podcast, and finally find the courage to speak publicly about all kinds of things that you’ve been trying to hide from…

You will get weirdly into Harry styles.

You will watch your son become a young man, with a job and drivers license, and your daughter merge into her confidence and teenage angst phase, and you will love it and hate it at the same time, because you know how fast it’s happening.

But wow, how cool are they?

You will start a new job with Mikey at his job, that will bring you together in a way you could only ever dream of…realizing after a year of continued loss…what you’ve really had all along is PURE GOLD.

The man is GOLDEN.

Passionate, golden Holden who is literally shown you that he has and will be the only human being alive to actually keep his promises to you and never abandon you or the life you’ve built together.

This year, genuine self love and an amazing marriage that you’ve worked and fought for for has became your true axis.

Lastly, you will unexpectedly lose Khalisi girl, and be reminded of the hard lesson of taking the most important things for granted…but she will show you and your family what it looks like to love each other ALL the way.

You will wrap up the year exhausted but hopeful that what you’ve had to let go of was for your best good.

Moving into the unknown, with a much lighter load and really…nothing left to lose.

You are hoping to restore a healthy relationship to fitness and moving your body again, in a way that isn’t just for serving your ego self or hustle culture.

You are hoping to restore your faith in faith…and no longer be ashamed, or hide your discoveries and gifts out of fear or shame from other versions of yourself you have let go of.

You are hoping to restore faith in friendship and loving people again, after learning how to draw and hold boundaries that serve you.

You are hoping to continue to discover your true purpose that isn’t attached to anyone or anything else outside of your authentic self.

You are hoping to finally be free, of the need to be understood or explain yourself in anyway.

Despite it all…you will PERSIST.