Choosing to Move Forward (Without Leaving the Past Behind)

A New Year’s Reflection Inspired by the Stranger Things finale (Note: spoilers below if you haven't watched this last episode!)

New Year’s Day carries a lot of quiet pressure.

We’re told it’s a time for fresh starts, clean slates, new versions of ourselves. But for many people, the turn of the year doesn’t feel clean at all. It feels heavy. It carries grief, loss, unfinished stories, and parts of life that didn’t turn out the way we hoped.

In the Stranger Things finale, there’s a moment where Hopper speaks about choosing to move forward. Not because everything is resolved. Not because his pain is gone. But because staying frozen in the past — even a meaningful past — can slowly shrink our lives.

What makes this moment so powerful is what it doesn’t say.

Hopper isn’t telling anyone to “get over it.”

He isn’t reframing loss into a lesson.

He isn’t suggesting that moving forward means forgetting the past.

Instead, he names something much more honest: the past matters — and we still have to choose how we live now.

Acceptance Is Not Approval

In therapy, acceptance is often misunderstood. It doesn’t mean liking what happened or agreeing with it. Acceptance is acknowledging reality as it is, rather than exhausting ourselves trying to make it different.

Hopper’s message reflects this beautifully. The loss he carries doesn’t disappear. It becomes something he carries with him as he steps into what’s next.

That’s an important distinction, especially at the start of a new year.

Moving forward doesn’t require abandoning the parts of your story that shaped you. It asks only that you stop organizing your entire life around what can’t be changed.

The Nervous System Knows When It’s Time

From a nervous-system perspective, we can’t “decide” our way into readiness. Acceptance emerges when there is enough safety, regulation, and support. Hopper doesn’t arrive at this realization in the middle of chaos — it comes after connection, reflection, and grounding.

That matters.

If the new year feels hard to step into, it may not be resistance. It may simply be your system asking for more time, more gentleness, or more support.

Choosing Forward, One Small Step

New Year’s resolutions often focus on dramatic change. But acceptance-based growth usually looks quieter:

Choosing to engage with life again, even while grieving

Letting joy coexist with sadness

Allowing the future to be unknown without trying to control it

Choosing to move forward isn’t a leap. It’s often a series of small, compassionate decisions made in the presence of pain.

The new year doesn’t require you to be brand new.

It only invites you to be here — with your full story — and to choose, again and again, how you live alongside it.