There is renewed hope every new year as the struggles of the previous year give way to a fresh start. As January 1st strikes, people all over the world join on a journey of change as they make their resolutions for 2024. It is the day gyms are most crowded and the most promises are made. Well, we’re now into February. How are we doing, folks?

Did you know that the second Friday of January is referred to as Quitters’ Day, and that Ditch New Year’s Resolution Day falls on January 17th. We know that the vast majority of people will not keep their resolutions: in fact, a study from Sundried.com found that 43% of people begin the year already anticipating that they will give up by the end of the month. Many people decide to give up altogether, resigned that things cannot and will never change.

In many ways, the phenomenon of New Year’s resolutions reflects the larger process of change we experience as humans. Even though we have a desire to grow, change is hard. It’s hard to begin, and it’s hard to sustain. Sometimes, the pressure and overwhelm associated with stepping out of a comfort zone keeps a person from even thinking about it. But the New Year is upon us.. well, the lunar one that is. Perhaps it’s as good of a reason as any to make some new resolutions. Are you willing try again? If so, here are some tips that may help:

1. Keep it simple. It can be tempting to try to change everything all at once or to engage goals with full abandon, but that often leads to taking actions without the underlying structures to sustain them. It’s like a runner who starts off the block too quickly and begins to fade because they do not have the energy left to finish strong. Instead, focus on smaller increments of change that will challenge you to grow but are still manageable. Gradual steps can build towards greater growth. Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” Building depth and not breadth by simplifying goals is a good way to build long-term and sustainable change.

2. Find your meaning. According to Angela Duckworth, a leading expert on grit, one important ingredient for follow-through and perseverance is to identify and focus on your passions. The more an individual action is attached to a larger meaning and desire, the greater the motivation to complete that action. We see this play out all the time. Students grind to achieve a grade at the end of the year. Athletes run wind sprints because every rep gets them closer to the championship. What might be your larger reason to work out, stop drinking, or try something new? Focusing on that can provide continued direction when you run into the dog days of summer.

3. Don’t do it alone. Reaching out to another person can be an incredibly important resource when it comes to follow through. Someone who gives consistent encouragement and accountability can provide a secondary, external source of motivation when internal willpower falters. Furthermore, working with another person offers an opportunity for feedback and reflection that is vital to learning and growth. Not only are there external benefits to reaching out, research has also found sharing goals with another person–particularly someone we hold in high esteem–can actually increase internal motivation as well.

4. Try again… again. Unfortunately, we will all face failure. Research from the University of Scranton found that a whopping 92% of people do not keep their New Year’s resolutions. Just as telling, however, is a study by Norcross and Vangarelli which found that those who successfully kept their resolutions still averaged 14 setbacks over a two-year period. A big part of success is learning what to do with failure. Failure is often thought of as the end of the story and is connected with feelings of incompetence, embarrassment, or rejection. One effective way of overcoming that mindset about failure is to see it as part of the growth process rather than the end result. As Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed 10,000 times, I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

Regardless of where you are with your resolutions, whether you are still going strong, have crashed and burned, or never started to begin with, we hope that this message can be a little bit of encouragement to continue, restart, or begin your journey of change. There is always the next opportunity to try again. There is always a new chance to grow. As the scriptures say, “His mercies are new every morning.” Have at it once more!

This writing was originally posted in an email sent to our mailing list on February 9th, 2024. Please enter your email at the bottom of the page if you would like to sign up to be part of our mailing list.

One of the strengths of Samaritan is that we are available to help people in an ongoing way with the problems that inevitably arise in life. Created in 1960, with therapists who stay with us for 10, 20, and 30 years, we serve families in a variety of ways—often beginning with individual or couples therapy, sometimes including additional family members, and when it’s indicated, referring them to another therapist with specific expertise. Clients sometimes come with a specific issue that is resolved in a few sessions, but frequently they find that the issues are more complicated and they engage in deeper, longer-term work.

An example of Samaritan as an ongoing family resource is a couple in their mid-40s who came to Samaritan for the first time 10 years ago. The problem was the “out of control” behavior of their two teenagers. They wanted to know how to set limits and provide support for their adolescents, both of whom were taking risks that could have serious long-range consequences. Their therapist helped them examine and make changes in how they were parenting and, at the same time, focused on protecting and strengthening their marital relationship.

A second round of therapy occurred when one of their aging parents needed to move from home to an assisted living facility.  The loss of independence was devastating for the parent and put our clients in the position of making hard but necessary decisions while being viewed as “the bad guys.” The therapy setting created space for them to voice their grief and frustration without appearing weak or unfeeling.

Later, health issues for each of the couple coincided with the husband’s planned retirement.  It brought them face to face with questions of their own mortality and an urgent need to re-think their financial expectations.  Again, having a therapist who could listen deeply to their fears, bringing both her history with the family and her training in life transitions, helped them move forward.  The couple pulled together their considerable resources—among them their love for each other, their strong Christian faith, their experience of meeting adversity with determination, and a soul-saving sense of humor.

The belief that both the couple and the therapist held as they worked together, once again, to find a way through very difficult circumstances is what Samaritan has always offered our community. A belief in our ability to care for one another and to create positive change.

Life isn’t always easy to navigate or easy to understand. Samaritan Center exists to help people cope, rebound, and heal from the unexpected difficulties life can bring.

In the third year of pandemic-driven change, we are determined to continue to live vibrantly into that mission. No matter their ages or their circumstances, our clients tell us they are weary, worn thin by the stress of isolation, unpredictability, and the incessant troubling news. For example, there is the woman in her 70s who meets with her therapist every other week. She lives alone in low-income housing, is largely estranged from her adult children, and worries continually about her health, her finances, and the uncertainty of the future. She talks about her faith and experience of decline: ‘You’re the only one I have to talk to,” she says. “I don’t know what I would do without being able to meet with you.’

Those of you who so generously support this ministry make it possible for us to continue to be a healing presence for people who are in need of care. Without these donations from our spiritual partners – church congregations and individuals – helping those in need simply can’t be done. We pray that you will stand beside us in this difficult time. We thank you.”

Braiding Sweetgrass
Review by Peggy Hansen

In the preface, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes: “I could hand you a braid of sweetgrass, as thick and shining as the plait that hung down my grandmother’s back. But it is not mine to give, nor yours to take. Wiingaashk belongs to herself. So I offer, in its place, a braid of stories meant to heal our relationship with
the world. This braid is woven from three strands: Indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most.”

In this beautifully written book, Kimmerer moves back and forth between stories of relationships with her family and her students, very detailed and scholarly descriptions of the plants she loves and their (and our) endangered environment, and the beloved traditions and wisdom of her elders. She describes the ceremonial giveaway, the minidewak, one of her peoples’ oldest teachings.” Generosity is simultaneously a moral and a material imperative, especially among people who live close to the land and know its waves of plenty and scarcity. Where the well-being of one is linked to the well-being of all. Wealth among traditional people is measured by having enough to give away…. In a culture of gratitude, everyone knows that gifts will follow the circle of reciprocity and flow back to you again. This time you give and next time you receive. Both the honor of giving and humility of receiving are necessary halves of the equation.”

She introduces us to the Thanksgiving Address, which embodies the Onondaga relationship with the world. ”Each part of Creation is thanked in turn for fulfilling its Creator-given duty to the others. It reminds you every day that you have enough,” she writes, drawing on the words of Freida Jacques, a teacher at the Onondaga Nation School. “Gratitude,” says Kimmerer, “doesn’t send you out shopping to find satisfaction, it comes as a gift rather than a commodity, subverting the foundation of the whole economy. That’s good medicine for land and people alike.” The recognition of loss is also a theme of her book, as she recounts the taking of children from their tribe and families, isolating them in boarding schools and forbidding them to speak their native language. She mourns the ecological destruction that has changed her beloved Onondaga Lake into “the most chemically contaminated lake in the United States.” But she says: “Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth. Environmental despair is a poison every bit as destructive as the methylated mercury in the bottom of Onondaga Lake…. Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who died on December 26, believed in and actively lived the South African principle of ubuntu. The word ubuntu is part of the Zulu phrase “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” which literally means, “A person is a person through other people.

”In The Book of Joy, which the Archbishop wrote with the Dalai Lama and Douglas Abrams, he said: “Ubuntu says when I have a small piece of bread, it is for my benefit that I share it with you.… In a very real sense we’re meant for a very profound complementarity. It is the nature of things. You don’t have to be a believer in anything. I mean, I could not speak as I am speaking without having learned it from other human beings…. I learned to be a human being from other human beings. We belong in this delicate network. I am, because you are. It is actually quite profound.… We are bound up and can be human only together.”

At Samaritan, we are deeply aware of how foundational it is to wellbeing to have reliable, caring relationships with others.  Mind, body, spirit, and relationship are bound up together, and healing occurs as we give attention to each of these elements of our humanity and actively seek to integrate them. We are grateful for the example of those, like Desmond Tutu, who have faced adversity without losing their ability to identify with others and live, not in separation but in solidarity with them.

As the pandemic has stretched now from months to years, we all have experienced the significant, sometimes catastrophic impact that it has had on relationships. Stress that arises from multiple directions can drain away the ability to connect with one another in meaningful ways. It affects everyone, parents and their children, husbands and wives, friends, work colleagues, and casual acquaintances. Reaching out to one another in nurturing ways is sometimes simply more than we can do. In the resulting isolation, our sense of the warmth of human connectedness – ubuntu – withers.

How are we to respond to the unchosen stress of this time and the fears that arise in our mind, our body, and our spirit?  Ubuntu tells us that, as individuals and in community, we can choose to intentionally express to one another respect, dignity, reciprocity, compassion, and mutuality.

When we feel overwhelmed by circumstances, it’s hard to know what that would look like. What can just one person do?  Mindfulness suggests that, first of all, we should simply pause, taking time to acknowledge what we’re thinking and feeling. As we’re able to accept and calm our anxiety, we will see the situation more clearly. We’ll see the possibilities, where we have some control or influence and how we can use that. We’re more able to let go of the things that are beyond our control.

As our minds become quiet, refraining from worrying and judging ourselves and others, we are able to respond to the problems in more creative and confident ways. We find that we can act with the energy and compassion of ubuntu, secure in the experience of our common humanity, our interconnectedness and our responsibility to one another.

And Now… How Do We Think About Re-entry?

It’s spring. We can feel the changing, evolving season. Light that lasts longer. New growth appearing. A taste of warmer days to come. People venturing out of hibernation.

It’s been a long winter, a long year, and we’ve become accustomed to the many ways in which we’ve been separated from one another. Many of us are wondering what this season of re-entry–the emerging from separation–will look like. There’s a feeling of uncertainty, a forgetting of how everyday relationship with the outside world is done. Used to be done. Should be done. Can be done.

Some of us feel the questions more intensely than others. Instead of embracing the new freedom, we look at it with a raised eyebrow. Our habits of caution outweigh our impulse to engage. That can lead us to wonder in a self-critical way–about ourselves, our resilience, our ability to adapt.

We know that distressing situations can trigger our feelings of anxiety and depression. When this happens, we do well to remind ourselves of strategies that can help manage these feelings. We may have learned some of them through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the practice of Mindfulness. While they’re simple skills, they’re not easy to maintain when we’re feeling stressed. Our efforts, however, can be rewarding.
Here is a reminder of some of those useful strategies:

• Stay in the present–don’t ruminate about the past or try to predict the future
• Focus on what you can control and set aside what you cannot
• Appreciate those things that are going well
  Maintain healthy habits of eating, sleeping and exercising
• Seek out pleasurable activities and meaningful connection with others
• Extend an attitude of generosity, both to yourself and to others

It seems fortuitous that our emerging from this highly restrictive year of the pandemic coincides with our calendar’s emergence from winter into spring. Access to vaccines and lower numbers of serious illness and death from the virus are allowing us to move about more freely. Sunny days are inviting us to come outdoors, shedding our raincoats and boots and woolen scarves.

So, is there a way to step into this re-entry, this emerging from separation into reconnection, with lightness, the spirit of spring? Can we bring what we’ve learned in this past year, about ourselves and others and reality itself, to a clearer and more compassionate understanding of what life is about? Will our inner conversations and our relationships with others thrive in this warmer climate? Will our sense of gratitude and hope speak to our experiences of loss and grief? Will we agree to move forward with a smile – one that may still at times be hidden by the masks we agree to wear but will surely be visible in our eyes.