Week 0 Reflection: December 29, 2025 - January 5, 2026

Courtney Q
Feb 8
4 min read

Every Monday, I do a weekly reflection to witness what came up, what I moved through, what worked, what didn't. To stay present with my own inner and outer experience. The first month of this year's weekly check ins inspired and informed "The Home Within" program - a guided experience to help deepen relationship with self. I'm experimenting with adapting my weekly reflections as blog posts - in the hopes that it can inspire your own reflection, too. Let's document the changes and stories that unfold over the next year and beyond.

This week brought endings, and new beginnings.

Brought long-haul flights and new faces.

Brought teary goodbyes and fresh notebooks, still virginal to the touch of my Paper Mate 1.4 pen.

I hope I can find more of these pens abroad.

December 30, 2025 I said goodbye to the few personal items I have left; goodbye to the US; goodbye to my mother and to my then partner.

This Winter, I'm exploring belonging in our relationship with self. In my own relationship with self.

It is the mantra, the meditation, the lens of focus this winter season.

It is the call, the question, the observation inward as everything turns and changes around me.

And it is this journey inward I invite you to join me on for yourself.

What am I learning is important to me in my relationship with self?
- What do I need personally to sustain and grow a healthy, vibrant relationship with myself?
- What are the rhythms, routines, rituals?
What is being tested in my relationship with self this season?
- What challenges am I being asked to grow and learn through?
Who am I becoming in this season of life?
- Who am I meeting in the mirror - how am I changing?
- What genuinely feels good and doesn't feel good?

This enquiry I hope can be both internal and external; also exploring belonging and 'relationship with self' in the cultural context of the African subcontinent.

The weekly prompts are available on Be to Belong's Instagram account.

So many things came up for me in the past week of embarking on my travels, but here were a few core themes and vignettes:

Seeing opportunities to turn in towards yourself and taking them

I am someone who gets a lot of joy from an airplane ride and specifically the window seat.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I intentionally book a window seat for my first 9 hour 30 min flight to AMS and arrive to find I am the only window seat that does not actually have a window.

I allowed myself to pout and be disappointed, even bargaining with the flight attendant to allow me to switch seats to the place in front of me that was clearly empty at the moment.

The family filed into the spot in front of me as the rest of the flight promptly filled up; leaving my chances of getting a window seat to a solid 0.

I looked at the blank wall next to me and rested my head against it - 'pretty comfy,' I'd say. It actually protruded slightly further than the classic window allowing a more ideal tilt for sleeping.

I looked down at my journal too, knowing we had plenty to catch up on.

I had just spent the month of December transiting over 15 different times; laying my head on an orchestra of different pillows - with different scents, sights, sounds accompanying them.

I'm leaving the country, indefinitely. My pout and slight grimace started to transform as "relationship with self" started to echo in my head. The mantra, the mission, the call!

If meaning is what we make of it; I wondered if this too, was a call inward.

Yes, the clouds are beautiful.

Yes, I enjoy the entrancing lines our agricultural lands make and the perspective gained from up above.

However, in a moment this big, I felt like I was being given a gift.

At least, I had the choice to see it this way.

The time would come to be challenged by the distractions, the stimulations of the world out there.

Right now was a time to focus in on the world in here.

What's the world like 'in here' on this special day, December 30, 2025?

What are the views like of my own inner landscape?

CUE:

staring at the seat in front of me
- soaking in the silence that felt like a sweet treat after months of chaos
a flurry of writing
feeling it all

Knowing what you want so you can ask for it

"You'll never get what you want if you don't ask for it."

But first, you'll never get what you want if you don't even know what you want.

Do you allow yourself to become aware of your desires?

Or, do you not even dare allow yourself to dream?

This week I became aware of the fact that I hide my own wants and needs from myself at times.

It feels like a sort of shy inner conflict I am wearing when I do this.

Like wearing an oversized long sleeve waffle knit when I really want to be in a tank top.

Do I hide from myself to preempt my own rejection?

There's kind of three steps to life

1) know what you want 2) communicate it 3) receive the answer & move forward

Fear or attachment to others' perception of me

I had an opportunity to record a short silly video in a beautiful forest overlooking a lake - with lilypads!!

But there were people across the pond who could see me, plus an unpredictable sprinkling of hikers a few yards behind me. Welcome: hypervigilance.

I felt paralyzed. I didn't want to be perceived as vapid. I didn't want to embarrass myself publicly. I didn't want to be perceived as an influencer. I didn't want to be disrespectful. I worried if people would hear me.

And so ultimately this stopped me. I kept my mouth shut and my phone tightly tucked.

But I started feeling the impact of letting the fear of others' perception; something that I never have control over anyways, control me.

We think we're controlling others, but we're actually exerting control over ourselves.

What if the fear of being misunderstood, is what actually keeps us misunderstood?

*view from the bench of inner conflict + self-judgment!*

For more content and reflections, follow @courtneyqatnoon and @betobelong on Instagram.