The first morning of the year always arrives quietly for me. No fireworks. No countdown replaying in my head. Just light moving across a room and the feeling of being awake before the rest of the world asks anything of me. I wake up nude, not as a statement, but because that is how I sleep now. That alone says something about how far I have come.
There was a time when the idea of greeting a new year without clothes would have felt exposed, even reckless. Now it feels honest. Necessary, even. Over the years, naturism has stopped being something I did and started being the way I live. When January arrives, I do not reach for resolutions. I reach for clarity. And clarity, for me, begins with having nothing to hide.
I did not come to naturism looking for a movement. I came to it looking for relief. Relief from expectations. From the constant negotiation with my own body. From the pressure to perform comfort instead of actually feeling it. What I found instead was a way of life that asked me to slow down, to listen, and to stop editing myself for an imagined audience.
As the naturist writer Ilsa Franz once observed, “Nudity does not make us vulnerable. Vulnerability already exists. Nudity simply removes the distractions.” That idea stayed with me long after I first encountered it because it put language to something I felt but could not yet articulate.
Starting a new year nude is not about optimism or self-improvement. It is about presence. It is about acknowledging where I am, how I feel, and who I have become without rushing to reinvent any of it.
The weight of hiding
Most of us spend years learning how to hide long before we ever learn how to be seen. We hide our bodies behind clothes that promise confidence. We hide our insecurities behind humor or silence. We hide our fears behind productivity. Even when we think we are being honest, there is often a layer of protection between who we are and who the world gets to see.
Before naturism, I carried that weight everywhere. I knew how to stand so my stomach looked flatter. I knew which angles worked best in photos, which is ironic considering photography is my profession. I knew how to talk about body acceptance without fully practicing it myself. I was good at presenting an image. I was less practiced at inhabiting my body without critique.
As photographer Nan Goldin famously said, “I want people to see exactly what I see.” That desire has always resonated with me, not just in my work behind the camera, but in how I wanted to live. Naturism eventually became the place where that honesty was no longer optional.
Standing naked among others made it impossible to maintain the illusion that everyone else had it figured out. Bodies varied. Comfort varied. Confidence came and went. What surprised me most was how quickly the pressure dissolved when comparison lost its power. Without clothes to signal status, style, or belonging, what remained was humanity.
The first year I truly committed to naturism taught me that hiding is exhausting. It also taught me that vulnerability does not require explanation. You can simply exist.
What nudity reveals over time
There is a misconception that naturism is about becoming fearless. It is not. It is about becoming familiar. Familiar with your body as it changes. Familiar with discomfort when it arises. Familiar with the way confidence ebbs and flows depending on the day.
Over time, nudity stopped being something I noticed. It became a baseline. What I began to notice instead were the thoughts that surfaced once the distraction of clothing was gone. Old narratives about worth. About desirability. About who gets to take up space. Naturism did not erase those narratives, but it gave me room to question them.
As author and cultural critic Susie Orbach wrote, “Bodies are not projects. They are places where we live.” That sentence could serve as a thesis for my entire naturist journey. Once I stopped treating my body as something to fix, manage, or improve, I began to experience it as a home.
I write often about how body acceptance is not a destination. It is a practice. Some days that practice is gentle. Other days it is deliberate. The new year has become a checkpoint not for measuring progress, but for checking in with my relationship to myself.
Am I listening to my body or managing it?
Am I present or performing?
Am I honest about what feels good and what does not?
Starting the year nude gives me a clear answer to those questions. There is no costume to hide behind. No role to play. Just skin, breath, and awareness.
January light and quiet intentions
There is something about January light that feels honest. It is thinner, cooler, less forgiving. It does not flatter. It reveals. Sitting nude in that light, hot cocoa cooling in my hands, I am reminded that intention does not have to be loud to be meaningful.
I no longer make resolutions to change my body or my habits. Naturism has taught me that chasing an ideal version of myself only reinforces the idea that who I am now is not enough. Instead, I set intentions rooted in presence.
This year, my intention is simple. Continue living with nothing to hide.
That means showing up authentically in naturist spaces without needing to prove belonging. It means writing honestly, even when the truth feels quieter than outrage or celebration. It means allowing my body to age, soften, strengthen, and change without narrating every shift as a problem to solve.
The philosopher Alan Watts once said, “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” Naturism has helped me resist that panic, especially at the turn of the year.
In my work as a photographer, I have always been drawn to unfiltered moments. Real light. Real skin. Real life. Naturism aligns with that instinct. It asks me to trust what is already there instead of manufacturing something more acceptable.
Community without costumes
One of the most profound shifts in my naturist journey has been my understanding of community. Without clothes, there is less room for posturing. Conversations tend to move quickly past small talk and into something more grounded. Not because nudity is intimate by default, but because it removes many of the usual barriers.
Sociologist Erving Goffman wrote extensively about the roles we play in everyday life, noting that much of social interaction is performance. Naturism disrupts that performance in subtle but powerful ways. When the costume is gone, what remains feels more real.
Community, in this context, is not about uniformity. It is about coexistence. Different bodies. Different stories. Different levels of comfort, all sharing space without hierarchy. That experience reshaped how I think about belonging.
As the new year begins, I think about how the naturist community supports living with nothing to hide. Not through agreement, but through presence. Through allowing others to be where they are without judgment. Through recognizing that confidence looks different on everyone and that discomfort does not mean failure.
Naturism has given me a space where showing up as myself is enough. I don’t have to hide my scars or who I am as a gay married man. That alone feels like a radical way to start a year.
What I am no longer hiding
Living with nothing to hide does not mean living without boundaries. It means being honest about where those boundaries are. This year, I am no longer hiding my need for rest. I am no longer hiding my discomfort when conversations turn performative or exclusionary. I am no longer hiding behind the idea that advocacy must always be loud to be effective.
Writer Audre Lorde reminded us that “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation.” That truth applies just as much to how we inhabit our bodies as it does to how we use our voices. Naturism has taught me that care and courage are not opposites.
Shame does not exist in isolation. It is taught. Reinforced. Monetized. Choosing to live nude challenges that system in small but meaningful ways. Not through confrontation, but through consistency. Through showing that another way of relating to the body is possible.
Starting the year with nothing to hide means acknowledging that my relationship with my body is ongoing. Some days I feel deeply at home in my skin. Other days I feel self-conscious for reasons I cannot always articulate. Both experiences are valid. Neither disqualifies me from this way of life.
Looking forward without reinvention
The pressure to reinvent ourselves at the start of a new year is relentless. New body. New habits. New identity. Naturism has taught me that reinvention is often another form of rejection. It implies that who we were was not acceptable.
I am not interested in becoming someone else in 2026. I am interested in continuing to become more present as myself. That includes honoring the work I have already done and recognizing where growth still feels possible.
Living with nothing to hide is not about perfection. It is about alignment. When my actions match my values. When my words match my lived experience. When my body is not treated as a project, but as a home.
As I step into this new year, nude and unguarded, I am reminded that the most radical thing I can do is stay. Stay with discomfort long enough to understand it. Stay with joy long enough to trust it. Stay with myself without asking to be different first.
The year will unfold as it always does. With challenges. With beauty. With moments that test my patience and others that remind me why this path matters. Starting it with nothing to hide does not guarantee ease, but it does offer clarity.
And clarity, I have learned, is more valuable than any resolution.
I begin this year the same way I intend to live it. Present. Honest. Uncovered. 🪐