by Melanie VanderPol-Bailey, MSW, CSW-PIP

Welcome to 2024.  As you embark on the New Year, are there goals, a single word you have chosen to focus on, or specific actions that you have already begun to incorporate into your life?  January is a month where many Americans take inventory on how their life is going, and what changes they would like to make.  Wikipedia defines a New Year’s resolution as “a tradition most common in the Western world but also found in the Eastern world, in which a person resolves to continue good practices, change an undesired trait or behavior, accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their behavior at the beginning of a calendar year”.  A new chapter in a new year can feel like an opportunity for a clean slate, to begin anew.  Embrace this  new season, new opportunity and new beginning. 

Life is full of beginnings and endings.  As 2023 is now in the rearview mirror, have you given yourself time to reflect on both the blessings and challenges of the past year?  When we think about the cost of living, we often think about financial ups and downs.  Yet there truly is a cost of living by simply just being human.  We cannot avoid many of the great sufferings or daily sufferings that are a part of this life adventure. Our culture has become accustomed to quick, easy and comfortable and we can have a tendency to run, resist, prevent or push away hard things.  While human nature works at times to avoid, nature or our natural world appears to do the opposite.   Nature seems to radically accept challenges and losses as a normal price of life.   As you turn the calendar from 2023 to 2024 there is opportunity to be both curious and grateful for the paradox of the both/and, which always includes the good and not so good moments.  There can be value when we lean into acceptance, tolerance and learning from life’s storms.

At all four of our locations - River Counseling Services in Platte, Sioux Falls Psychological Services, and Stronghold Counseling Services in Sioux Falls and in Yankton, our mission is this- we meet you where you are, offering hope.  You may schedule an appointment at the Platte office at 605-337-3444 or meet with one of our Sioux Falls or Yankton based therapists from your computer, smartphone, or in person at any of our clinics. To schedule an appointment, please call 605-334-2696.