The year of helping others

The best way to get through 2024 is together.

Making decisions from a place of fear

Buying stuff I don’t need

Negative self-talk

These are some of the things I wrote on slips of paper Sunday night before tossing them into a roaring fire. In the final hours of 2023, Billy and I burned what we wanted to let go of and discussed the things we wanted to welcome in the year ahead.

Farewell, 2023. (Getty Images)

The person I want to be feels just out of reach from the person I am. Perhaps this rings true for you, too. For the most part, I like myself. I think I’m a generally good and thoughtful person who tries her best. But, as much as I strive to accept and love who I am, I also desperately want to become a better version of me.

The improved Katie? She’s especially easy to love.

As the years go by, the difference between the person I am and the person I want to be is much less superficial. In the past, I may have wanted to be skinnier or more successful. These days, my wishes are more virtuous. I want to be kinder, more patient, less fearful, more benevolent.

Sometimes, this version of me feels possible. As long as I’ve gotten a decent night’s sleep, found time for gratitude and exercise, have a reasonable schedule ahead of me, and my hormones are working in my favor, I can resemble the Katie I strive for.

But it’s rare — near impossible, most days — for all those things to line up. There are plenty of days when my schedule is too packed. When I haven’t gotten enough sleep or exercise. When I’m hormonal and stressed out. When I’m grumpy, judgmental, and mean to myself and others. When I’m not even close to the optimal version of me.

Isolating from friends

Second-guessing myself

Saying ‘yes’ when I’m already overwhelmed

2024 feels like a big year. Here in the United States, it’s an election year — a fact that currently carries far more dread than promise. It’s a year when questions about our future are large and the consequences loom larger. On a personal level, I will turn 39 this year, which seems significant. (According to researchers, people increase their search for meaning in both constructive and destructive ways as they approach a new decade.) And for most of 2024, my daughter will be 3, an age that most parents and parenting experts describe as both a joy and major challenge.

While I’m planning to approach this year like years past — by setting intentions week by week — I’m also considering the larger picture. What kind of person do I want to be in 2024? And what can I do to make that vision of myself a reality?

I don’t have those answers just yet. But I do know what attitudes, habits, and beliefs I want to let go of.

Picking fights with Billy

Worrying about things I can’t control

Comparing myself to my peers

The stakes of life, of humanity, feel impossibly high right now. The threats of war, climate change, income inequality, and gun violence, just to name a few, are overwhelming to consider. In a time like this, isn’t it selfish to focus on myself?

“I think that this is a very hard time to be a human,” my ever-wise friend Nicki texted me the other night. “It feels like we are a bit removed from ourselves so often, and that makes connection so hard.”

Yes! That’s it. I want to better connect with myself — to connect with the higher version of me — in order to better connect with others. Connection is what this world needs. And it’s one of the things that’s missing in my life.

May we leave the bad things behind. (Getty Images)

Obsessing over money

Feeling shame about my grief

Doomscrolling

A few weeks ago, as I was tucking my toddler into bed, she began talking about how, as children get bigger, they become grownups, “and grownups can do things.”

“Oh yeah?” I replied. “What kinds of things can grownups do?”

She thought for a second, then said, “Help people.”

I told her that was a very good and sweet answer. Her response made me tear up a little, as these precious bedtime moments sometimes do. As she drifted off to sleep, I thought about the truth in her words. Adults do have the ability to help others, even if we don’t do it often enough.

Over the next few days, I kept reflecting on that sweet, simple reply: Help people. I couldn’t stop thinking how much better the world would be if we used that ability more often.

To help people, we have to connect. We must first connect with ourselves in order to reach a place of wellness and generosity. We must connect with others so we can bear witness to their hurts and needs. And we must connect with our communities, to offer support where it most matters.

I want 2024 to be a year of connection, of helping, of hope. I have no illusions that it will be an easy year. Wars are still raging, people are still hungry, humanity is still lost — in countless ways. In times of hardship it’s tempting to turn inward, to think only of yourself and your family, especially here in individualistic America, where loneliness is rampant. But focusing only on ourselves isn’t the approach that will save us. As life becomes harder, we will survive by helping each other.

Children’s television host Fred Rogers famously said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” That’s comforting advice for little ones: To look for the helpers. 

But if Mister Rogers was speaking to us adults, I suspect he’d challenge us to be the helpers. To help others, like only grownups are able to do.

So here’s to doing just that in 2024. To a year of connection. To a year of change and growth and challenge. To a year that we’ll get through together.

xoxo
KHG

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An important postscript.

Before I close this week’s newsletter, I wanted to touch on the controversy surrounding the existence of Nazis on Substack — and the disappointing response from Substack leadership.

To be abundantly clear: I am strongly anti-Nazi, anti-fascist, and anti-racist. Although I planned to take a break from Substack over the holidays, this situation weighed heavily on me these past few weeks. To be honest, I was glad to be on a short publishing hiatus because it allowed me to weigh different options and read different perspectives instead of being reactive.

The depressing truth is that Nazis — and other terrible people — exist in all parts of the internet, though thankfully in small numbers. Leaving Substack for another platform won’t ensure that I’ll find a place that’s hate-free, but it will make it harder to reach as wide of an audience as I’ve found here. Substack has enabled me to grow my readership beyond my wildest dreams, and while I’m incredibly disappointed and sickened by the company’s response to this situation, I don’t think leaving this platform is the right choice for me. I want to keep writing essays like today’s offering and (hopefully) inspiring other folks in the process. Right now, Substack is the best place for me to do that.

As Anne Helen Petersen so thoughtfully wrote, “I do not use Substack as my publishing platform because I believe in their ethics; I use it because it is the best way to connect with current readers and connect with new ones.” 

It all comes back to connection. I am proud to join other writers in pushing Substack for change. For now, I’m staying put — and I’ll use what power I have here to fight for good.