Embrace: Welcoming What I Didn’t See Coming
- Shannon Hurst
- Jan 10
- 4 min read
Manifestation, Surrendered
I’ve never been much for New Year’s resolutions.
Not because I don’t believe in growth or intention, I do, but because I’ve learned that life doesn’t always respond well to rigid plans. Resolutions can feel like contracts we sign with a future we don’t fully understand yet. And when life inevitably interrupts those plans, we’re left feeling like we’ve failed, instead of recognizing that we’re simply being redirected.
What I do believe in is vision. And intention. And listening, deeply, to intuition.
That’s why, instead of resolutions, I choose a word for the year.
My word for 2026 is embrace.
I believe in manifestation, but not the kind that demands control.
I believe in surrendered manifestation. The kind that starts with clarity and trust, but leaves room for life to do what it does best: surprise us.
Listening when life whispers (and when it doesn’t)
Writing my book about my love/hate relationship with death was always part of the plan last year. I knew I wanted to talk about grief. I hoped, quietly, that it might help a few people feel less alone.
What I didn’t expect was the response.
As the book made its way into the world, it became clear that this wasn’t just about storytelling or personal healing. There was, and is, a profound unmet need for what I’m now calling grief literacy.
Our Western culture has not done a great job teaching us how to deal with grief in all its many forms. We’re uncomfortable talking about it. We’re equally uncomfortable listening to it. We often don’t know what to say, so we say nothing, or we say the wrong thing in an attempt to make the discomfort go away.
We have a tendency to want to fix people who are grieving. To offer solutions. To rush them toward healing. To look for silver linings or lessons before the loss has even had space to be felt.
But grief doesn’t want to be fixed.
It wants to be witnessed.
Grief literacy, to me, means learning how to sit with someone in their pain without trying to tidy it up. It means understanding that presence is often more helpful than advice. And it means allowing ourselves the same kindness, letting our own grief exist without judgment, timelines, or expectations.
“It’s okay to be broken” and why that matters
In early December, I wrote a blog titled It’s Okay to Be Broken. At the time, it felt honest and necessary.
What I’ve realized since is that many of us don’t actually believe that.
We say it. We nod along. But when brokenness shows up in our own lives, we rush to hide it, apologize for it, or push through it. We deny ourselves the kindness we so easily offer others.
We live in a culture that values productivity over presence, strength over softness, and recovery over rest.
And grief doesn’t work that way.
Being broken isn’t a failure. It’s often the most human response there is.
Following the redirection
Somewhere along the way, I realized my career was shifting, not away from what I cared about, but deeper into it. The work I’m being called toward now isn’t the work I outlined last year, but it feels unmistakably right.
When I look back, I can see how every chapter of my life, the loss, the love, the uncertainty, the resilience... has quietly prepared me for this moment. For this work. For this way of showing up.
I truly can’t believe how clearly the dots are connecting.
And that clarity didn’t come from forcing anything. It came from listening. From trusting. From allowing myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, good things are allowed to become the new norm.
Allowing myself to receive
This year, I’m also embracing something else: worthiness.
I’ve finally allowed myself to believe that I deserve good things. That I deserve to be loved. To build a meaningful career. To travel. To experience joy. To take up space. To invest in myself... not selfishly, but intentionally, so that I can better show up for others.
I’m investing in myself to help invest in others. And that feels like alignment, not ego.
I’m excited about my future. And that matters.
Because excitement is a form of hope, and hope is something we don’t talk about enough when grief is part of the story.
Embrace
So this year, I’m embracing it all.
The clarity and the uncertainty. The plans and the pivots. The light and the dark.
Because I’ve learned that good often comes from the dark, not despite it.
And if there’s one thing I know for sure as this year begins, it’s this: when we listen to our intuition, soften our grip, and allow ourselves to be fully human, life has a way of meeting us exactly where we are.
Here’s to embracing whatever comes next.
I think this is what I need right now.