New Year, Best You
“Who do you want to be today?”
This is the question I’m using as my guide as I slowly ease into 2024. The old Renae was constantly rushing. I couldn’t wait to get to the next thing. The next practice, the next game, the next meeting, the next doctor’s appointment, the next next next. My mind was a relentless loop of activities and to-do lists (I still do love a good list, though) that I never actually stopped to reflect on anything I had accomplished.
Despite my list of achievements, for much of my adult life, I was often left feeling empty, hollow, and unfulfilled, and I could never make sense as to why. Everyone else saw a highly successful professional athlete and champion, a devoted wife, and loving mother to three amazing children, but on the inside, I couldn’t name a single thing that made me happy outside of those titles. Aimlessly maneuvering from task to task, and goal to goal was no longer enough. I needed some deep introspection:
What am I truly curious about?
What books do I enjoy reading?
What do I prefer to do in my free time?
For the answers to these questions, I had none. My tunnel vision, built out of a need for perfection, had become a crutch. When you’re always on the go, or always rushing to the next thing, you seldom take the time to check in with what’s going on internally. You allow the hustle to deter you from confronting the fact that you’re not happy, and probably haven’t been for a lot longer than you’d care to admit. I get it.
I had every intention for this first blog post to be my new and intimate introduction to the new year, but I’m realizing now that this is really a re-introduction to myself. As you follow along and get to know me, with each post, I’m getting to know this Renae as well. While she’s new to you, she’s certainly new to me too. She’s a lot softer. She’s more willing to admit she doesn’t have all the answers all the time. But above all else, she happily meets each moment now with honesty and vulnerability. I’ve never done that before. And now I understand that it’s because I never trusted myself enough to.
When it came to overachieving in netball, I could do that in my sleep. I would over-prepare; I would wake up early to practice and stay late, long after everyone had left. “Free time” didn’t exist in my world because I was either in the gym or on the field. I was a machine. And the results proved to be just as rewarding. I was a champion, for goodness sake! Surely that meant that my process was working right? But looking back, I see that I have always trusted my professional self, but I have never trusted my personal self.
““Looking back, I see that I have always trusted my professional self, but I have never trusted my personal self.””
How I showed up at practice or at games was never a concern for me because I knew that I would be able to not only perform, but I would flourish. Why? Because the fear of failure would make me sick with anxiety. It would quite literally keep me up at night. I was so driven by the external validation of championships, titles, degrees, and awards that I lost sight of why I was doing any of this.
And then the day came when I retired from netball. Which was followed by the birth of my kids. Cue the existential crisis. I was sure I had done the work to prepare myself for life after sports, but instead, I was completely blindsided by how much I missed it. It felt like a huge loss and I was totally disconnected from who I once knew myself to be. I was grieving. I had dedicated almost two decades of my life to netball and now it was just… over. The swift transition from my retirement to having kids started the clock on my next chapter in life, and suddenly I was faced with my biggest challenge to date: figuring out who I am.
Who was I when nobody was watching?
Who was I in my quiet moments?
Who was I when I failed?
Because life has a funny way of hand delivering you the exact lesson you need to learn, I would soon find out. I owe so much of my personal growth and transformation to my children. Before you have kids, there are a lot of ideas and concepts you have in your head about what being a parent will feel like, or what your kids will be like. There are so many expectations – most of them completely unrealistic and unattainable – of ourselves and our children that you will be forced to reconcile with.
On January 8th, 2019, my son, Jacob was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Talk about blowing your expectations out of the water. This wasn’t something that was ever on my radar, yet here I was now being made to, once again, show up to a moment honestly and vulnerably. My son didn’t need Netball Renae, Wife Renae, or Autism Mom Renae, he just needed me. I’ll be very honest: it was hard. My focus had to shift from what the outside world thought of me and my family to what my children actually needed. Love, nurturing, and protection. My children have never asked or needed me to be perfect, they just need me to show up.
““My children have never asked or needed me to be perfect, they just need me to show up.””
I’m still learning to release the false promise of perfectionism to lean comfortably into vulnerability. My goal isn’t to look happy — I want to be happy. By finally admitting – to my family, the world, and most importantly, to myself – that I don’t always have everything together has ironically been the biggest catalyst to finding real contentment, peace, and joy in my life.
I want my children to see their mother as someone who tried.
I want them to know and remember their mom as someone who embraced change and the fear that comes with it.
I want them to see the laughs and the tears, the successes and the failures. All of it is real, and all of it is me. Everyday I wake up and choose to be the best version of myself for that day. As I settle into more self-acceptance, there are so many things I wish I could go back to tell my younger self. I’d tell her to slow down, to give herself grace, to allow herself to feel the things she was bottling up, or to accept that yes, she was going to eventually fail (many times!), and that it was going to be okay. In fact, it would be better than okay.
All the things that younger Renae thought would be her liabilities have turned out to be the things that my family and friends love and appreciate the most about me. They also happen to be the things I love most about myself, too. Success has always given me so much, but it has never solved a single one of my problems. All that junk that I was suppressing, determined to ignore, was still there waiting for me after every championship title or award.
For 2024, I’m doing away with all of that. And when it comes to being vulnerable, Dr. Ron Siegel said it best for me, the goal is to “make a connection, not an impression.” Every day is going to require something different of me, and I’m finally starting to enjoy the discovery process of being Renae — my most important title.
