At the Turning of the Year: Set Intentions, Not Expectations
The New Year is often framed as a clean slate. A reset. A chance to begin again.
For adoptees, the turning of the year can feel more layered than that. Endings and beginnings tend to stir questions of origin, belonging, and continuity. As one year closes and another opens, emotions may rise that don’t fit neatly into celebration or resolution. There can be gratitude and grief. Hope and heaviness. Relief and longing — sometimes all at once.
This complexity makes sense. It’s what makes us human.
Honoring Where We Come From
Adoptees carry multiple beginnings. Our lives include stories that started before us — in other bodies, other families, other circumstances. As the year ends, reflection may naturally reach beyond the last twelve months and into the deeper currents of our lives: what we know, what we don’t, and what we’ve had to make sense of along the way.
Honoring where we come from doesn’t require clarity or closure. It can be as simple as acknowledging the truth of your experience — the love, the loss, the unanswered questions, and the resilience it took to arrive here.
Making Space for What Arises
The transition into a new year can bring up Big Feelings for adoptees. You may feel reflective, unsettled, hopeful, resistant, or numb. You may want to look back — or avoid looking altogether. There is no “right” emotional posture for this moment.
What matters is permission. Permission to feel what you feel without minimizing it or rushing past it. Permission to hold complexity without forcing resolution.
Setting Intentions, Not Expectations
For adoptees, the year ahead doesn’t need to be defined by goals that push us away from ourselves. Intentions can be quieter, more rooted.
Intentions might sound like:
I will center my voice and lived experience.
I will prioritize my well-being, even when it’s inconvenient.
I will tell the truth — to myself and, when it feels safe, to others.
I will honor my nervous system, my boundaries, and my pace.
Intentions are not demands. They are invitations.
A Call to Adoptees
As we step into a new year, we invite adoptees to place themselves at the center — not the margins — of their own lives. To choose what support looks like. To define belonging on their own terms. To seek care, community, rest, creativity, or distance in whatever form supports their well-being.
Centering yourself is not selfish. It is restorative. It is necessary.
Moving Forward, Whole
The end of a year and the beginning of a new one can remind adoptees of what has been lost and what is still possible. Both truths can coexist. You do not have to resolve the past to move forward. You only have to carry it with honesty and care.
At Adoptee Identity, we believe honoring where you come from and choosing what comes next are deeply connected acts. This year, may you move forward grounded in your truth, supported in your complexity, and empowered to shape your life in ways that feel authentic and whole.
However that looks for you.
