Letter From the Editor: January

Wow. Happy New Year. I’m back. Or more like, I feel like I’m finally here. Less on some new year new me shit, more on some finally accepting and liking (loving, even) and celebrating and stepping into the person I’ve always been but had no idea how to handle or see or fathom. And I didn’t realize how much I was waiting for it. What it would feel like to start to bask in it. Ngl: it’s pretty fucking tite tbh.

Honestly, 2019 was an absolute motherfucker. A death rattle of sorts to a wild chapter of the journey I’ve been on since 2016, the beginning of the year I started Hella Pinay (sidenote: December 2019 marked our three-year anniversary!!! Hiieeee). For me, much of last year was spent in the throes of mourning and super painful healing, breaking through hella lifetimes of self-sabotaging patterns and attachments based in a low sense of self-worth. It def culminated in moments of peak wackness but like through all the wtf, I was held by this deep inner knowing that it was all for my own growth and that I had to just let myself feel through it. Literally crossing a whole-ass threshold into a new way of being, and coming out on the other side surprisingly really really intact.

Lately I’ve been musing a lot on happiness - the idea in general and on my own, specifically. Like if I really really shook off the last vestiges of societal conditioning and self-judgement, reflected deeply on an unlimited world of my own pleasure and making: what actually makes me happy? And I’ve found that it’s outside of the realm of understanding for a lot of people, and even for myself I think. I’ve also realized that most people actually don’t want to be happy. We talk so much about happiness, might even think we are, BUT: when faced with the possibility of real uninhibited joy, intense feelings, deep fulfillment, I think most of us actually find it terrifying. Myself included.

As we embark on a new decade, I’d like to pose a question and a challenge: What would your life look like if you fully allowed yourself to be yourself? To be fully happy? Like, really really tho?

This year, I encourage you to find your own happiness, even if it’s outside the realm of other peoples’ (or your own) limited understanding. Fuck what makes other people happy, what society has conditioned us to want and strive for. What do YOU really want? May we all face our own happiness as bravely as we can muster, step into our authentic selves, and go get our lives for real real.

<3 Steph