The question we are all called to answer this new year.
Good morning, Summary New Year invitations to reinvent yourself are everywhere — and for driven women carrying relational trauma or attachment wounds, they can inadvertently reinforce the lie that you’re fundamentally broken and need fixing.
- Truly, the new year always feels like a bit of a gift to me.
- Clarifying what you need and want from your one wild and precious life.
- So I want to share five tips and tricks I have for clarifying your answers to this question if it feels murky for you:
- Wrapping up.
- What’s Running Your Life?
- Frequently Asked Questions
- References
Good morning,
Summary
New Year invitations to reinvent yourself are everywhere — and for driven women carrying relational trauma or attachment wounds, they can inadvertently reinforce the lie that you’re fundamentally broken and need fixing. This post proposes a different kind of question: not ‘what do I need to change?’ but ‘what do I need to understand?’ — and makes the case for approaching a new year from curiosity rather than self-criticism.
Happy New Year to you!
I hope that this first week of your year has been good, easeful and reflective of all that may come your way in 2018.
I’m back from my holiday travels, feeling nourished and inspired about this coming year and all the potential it holds. Inspired and also in awe of all that can happen for each of us in 365 days.
Truly, the new year always feels like a bit of a gift to me.
Relational trauma refers to psychological injury that occurs within the context of important relationships, particularly those with primary caregivers during childhood. Unlike single-incident trauma, relational trauma involves repeated experiences of emotional neglect, inconsistency, manipulation, or abuse within bonds where safety and trust should have been foundational.
Intentional Goal Setting
Intentional goal setting is the practice of choosing goals that are genuinely aligned with your own values, desires, and vision — not those inherited from family systems, cultural conditioning, or the pressure to perform. For people with relational trauma backgrounds, this often requires a prior step: discerning which of your goals actually belong to you, and which are organized around earning approval, proving worth, or managing anxiety.
A blank slate. A chance to craft and script more of the life I’d like to consciously live and a chance to move away from that which no longer serves me.
It’s a time of year when I ask myself a question taken from the poem, The Summer Day, by Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Mary Oliver.
The Summer Day
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
– Mary Oliver
These two lines, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” contain the question I feel compelled to ask myself each year.
And indeed, I think this is the question (or one of the questions) we are all called to answer this new year if we want to more fully show up for our lives.
In 2017, life, for many of us, may have felt more turbulent, more fleeting, more challenging than any other in recent memory.
The fragility and preciousness of life can often feel more marked in such contrast. It did for me at least.
And such fragility reminds me to ask this question of myself and to all who come through my doors for counseling and for help, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
In asking this question, we can acknowledge that life is fleeting and that we will die. And that, while death is unavoidable, it can be a source of great inspiration and motivation to help us more clearly see how it is we want to live while we do.
This question prompts us to audit our lives, to examine what’s working and what’s no longer serving us, which courses we may need to re-plot, and which paths still feel like our own personal true north.
I want to gently invite you to ask yourself this question this year. And I also want to provide you with some additional prompts and tips to help you better reflect on what, indeed, you do want to do with your one wild and precious life this year.
Clarifying what you need and want from your one wild and precious life.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”RUMI
Sometimes, simply in asking this question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, we will know our answers. We’ll hear our soul. We will feel clear.
But, for many of us, this will not be the case.
The answer to this question may feel murky and may feel hard to distinguish from “shoulds” (which, of course, are not true soul longings but rather what we imagine is expected of us from external sources). We may feel so disconnected from our truth that this question makes us anxious or sad that we can’t answer it.
And that’s okay! I think that’s a really common response. It’s not as if society by in large encourages us to pay attention to the whispers of our soul on a daily basis, does it?
So I want to share five tips and tricks I have for clarifying your answers to this question if it feels murky for you:
- Pay attention to your body. Yes, your body. Close your eyes, deepen your breath, relax into your body and notice any sensations in your body. Tightness, warmth, tingles, tension. Notice it all and be curious what those somatic (body-based) signals are saying. What clues does your body have for you about what you want?
- Pay attention to where your mind goes when it wanders. Reflect on what you daydream about, what your waking reveries contain. Do you dream of travel, of more time outside, of a deeply creative work life? The content that your wandering mind is drawn to again and again may signal a longing of your soul.
- Ask yourself, what do you want so badly but are afraid to even admit it to yourself? Is there something you feel embarrassed or even a little ashamed to want or long for? Good! This may be information about what you truly want. Seriously.
- Look back at your prior journals and diaries. What did you write about and hunger for when you were younger? A certain career path or lifestyle choice? A way of living in the world that you feel far away from at present? Your old self’s reflections may still resonate with you today, so pay attention to what you wrote about.
- Get still. Whether this is in nature, at home on your couch, even on the subway commuting into work, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, try to clear your mind and be still. And then pay attention to what surfaces.
Wrapping up.
And please remember, this is not about goal formulation, per say. When Mary Oliver asks us that question, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”, in my opinion, she’s asking us to listen to our soul for the deepest kind of life longings we have, soul hungers, true desires and dreams.
I invite you to make 2018 the year you feed your soul more.
When we nourish our souls by consciously choosing more and more of the life we dream of for ourselves, we can, in my opinion, show up in the world more nourished, equipped, and sustained to face the external realities of life and to support others along our path.
I’ll be asking myself this question over and over again this year and invite you to do the same.
Now I would love to hear from you:
When you ask yourself this question, what comes up for you?
If you’re open to it, please leave a message in the comments on the blog so our community of readers and learners can benefit from your insight and wisdom.
Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.
Warmly,
Annie
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Frequently Asked Questions
This is part of our comprehensive guide on this topic. For the full picture, read: Outgrowing Your Origins: A Complete Guide.
DISCLAIMER: The content of this post is for psychoeducational and informational purposes only and does not constitute therapy, clinical advice, or a therapist-client relationship. For full details, please read our Medical Disclaimer. If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) or text HOME to 741741 (Crisis Text Line).
You deserve a life that feels as good as it looks. Let’s work on that together.
References
- Schore, A. N. (2003). Affect Regulation and the Repair of the Self. W. W. Norton & Company.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior. Psychological Inquiry.
- Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Attitude Toward Oneself. Self and Identity.
- Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror. Basic Books.
- Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology.
- Gilbert, P. (2009). The Compassionate Mind: A New Approach to Life’s Challenges. New Harbinger Publications.
- Markus, H., & Nurius, P. (1986). Possible Selves. American Psychologist.
FREE QUIZ
The invisible patterns you can’t outwork…
Your LinkedIn profile tells one story. Your 3 AM thoughts tell another. This quiz reveals the childhood patterns keeping you running — and why enough is never enough.
TAKE THE QUIZPeople-pleasing is a pattern of prioritizing others’ approval and avoiding conflict, often at the expense of your own needs, values, and authenticity. It’s a problem because it leads to resentment, exhaustion, and a loss of self. While it often feels like kindness, it’s frequently driven by fear—of rejection, conflict, or not being ‘enough’—rather than genuine generosity.
People-pleasing often develops as a coping strategy in environments where expressing your needs or disagreeing felt unsafe or led to negative consequences. If you learned that keeping others happy was the way to stay safe or feel loved, this pattern becomes deeply ingrained. It’s a survival strategy that outlived its usefulness.
Breaking the people-pleasing pattern starts with awareness: noticing when you’re doing it and what fear is driving it. Then, practice small acts of honoring your own needs and opinions, even when it feels uncomfortable. Learning to tolerate the discomfort of potentially disappointing others is a key skill. Therapy can help you explore the roots of the pattern and develop healthier ways of relating.
Genuine kindness comes from a place of abundance and free choice; you give because you want to, not because you’re afraid of the consequences if you don’t. People-pleasing is driven by fear and a need for approval. The key difference is your internal motivation: are you acting from genuine care, or from a need to manage others’ emotions and secure your own safety?
Chronic people-pleasing can lead to a significant loss of self. When you’re constantly adapting to others’ expectations and suppressing your own needs and opinions, it becomes difficult to know who you actually are and what you genuinely want. Healing people-pleasing often involves a process of rediscovering and reclaiming your authentic self.
Annie Wright
LMFT · Relational Trauma Specialist · W.W. Norton AuthorHelping ambitious women finally feel as good as their résumé looks.
As a licensed psychotherapist, trauma-informed executive coach, and relational trauma specialist with over 15,000 clinical hours, she guides ambitious women — including Silicon Valley leaders, physicians, and entrepreneurs — in repairing the psychological foundations beneath their impressive lives. Annie is the founder and former CEO of Evergreen Counseling, a multimillion-dollar trauma-informed therapy center she built, scaled, and successfully exited. A regular contributor to Psychology Today, her expert commentary has appeared in Forbes, Business Insider, Inc., NBC, and The Information. She is currently writing her first book with W.W. Norton.
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