Hello Lovelies & Happy New Year to you & your loved ones!

It is officially 2020 - the start of a new decade. This past year has been such a rollercoaster of events and emotions - love-filled laughter and pain fueled tears. The days blurred together and sped quickly past us once more, and 365 days later, we are left to reflect on the series of events that led us to where we are now. 2019 was a year of endless trials, each one pushing me further into a spiral of confusion, self-doubt and uncertainty about what the future holds for me. Through these particularly trying moments, this once optimistic, positive, driven woman was brought to the brink of hopelessness - an emotion that I had rarely come close to feeling in the past. Where I had always seen the glass half-full, I would see only a glass so close to drying out it might crack. I had never before thought it possible for me to lose sight of my goals, my dreams, and my happiness - but there they were, growing further and further away from me with each fleeting day that passed me by.

I am not sharing these thoughts with you in the hopes that you will feel sorry for me, rather, I hope for quite the opposite. I hope that by reading these words, anyone who felt a similar way at any point in time during 2019 will take comfort in the fact that they are not alone. These past few weeks, social media has been plastered with people’s “most liked” photos of 2019, and other “glamourous” moments from the past year. We already waste so much time comparing ourselves to one another, so my hope is to provide a taste of reality for those out there who, like me, did not have the most “instagram worthy” year.

In saying all of this, I want to take a moment to stress the importance of gratitude - regardless of whether your year was comprised of blissful ease or uphill challenges. Because every moment - be it good or bad, fuse to form one big narrative that, with time, moulds us into the beautifully-unique individuals that we all are. From the happiest of moments we learn to be gracious and humble, and from the saddest, we learn how to be courageous and empathetic. No matter what our narrative is, we learn from the moments that shape us, and we come out the other end stronger. Sometimes it takes a little hardship to enable us to truly understand just how special the happy moments really are. Despite the many downfalls of 2019, it was also the year that I gathered the courage to persue my dream, and create contentbykristyn.com. It was the year I began to stand up for myself, and the year that I learnt to accept myself for who I am. I had loving, supportive people by my side to remind me to rise-up whenever I fell down, and that is a luxury that I will be eternally grateful for.

So, I am grateful for all of the incredibly beautiful moments that I was priveleged enough to experience in 2019, but I am also grateful for all of the trials I faced as well. Because without those trials, I would be a very different woman than the one writting this post right now. I am braver, stronger, and filled with a fire that is propelling me towards my wildest dreams - and I wish nothing more than for you all to find your own fire within, and unleash it upon the world in 2020.