Words Worth Shouting
In 2018 my neighbor posted on Instagram about reflecting on the “one word” approach she had for New Year’s resolutions. Like many people, I have a love/hate relationship with resolution making. 2018 found me knee deep in my personal rubble following a year I’ve come to refer to as “ground zero”; a year where I lost my role as primary caregiver to my son, my identity as a teacher and myself. Weekly art therapy was teaching me how to keep my head above water and taking on one word as a signpost on my search for a path back to myself seemed like it might be the flashlight I needed.
Fast forward to today. The first day of a new year; perched on the precipice of high expectations for anything brighter than the darkness that hangs like a shroud over 2020. You might think COURAGE would make the perfect choice for the year ahead and you wouldn’t be wrong, however, since hindsight is twenty/twenty, it turns out that it was the the exact word I needed as a guide to make it through what might possibly come to be known as one of the most challenging times in modern world history. I marvel at how I had no inkling of the pending pandemic a year ago when I woke up knowing that “courage” would be my intention for the new year. After all, I was fresh off a year where my first “word”, BLOOM, was a perfect pairing to the growth spurt I was making on my quest to find my authentic self.
As I sit here in the last couple of hours of the first day of 2021, I am a firm believer that the word I am about to declare will be the best companion for the adventures ahead. Welcome 2021; 364 days ripe with opportunity to live into JOY! My first act of JOY is to launch this new feature of my website!
Join me as I create weekly Blog Posts reflecting on the small and big moments over the last three years that are linked to the words I chose as “resolutions” to help me stay grounded.
Learn how my 27 year career as a teacher came to an abrupt halt.
Find out how ART became my “new career”.
Look through the window of my personal struggles with anxiety and depression and see how I developed more positive mental health routines.
Be present to my reflections on adoption and parenting and the mistakes I am learning to name and how they impacted my relationship with my son.
You will also get an inside look at my writing process as I seek to revise my original Instagram musings (found at #studiospacesunday) and compile them into a cohesive memoir of the midlife storm that shattered me and my journey to pick up the pieces. Each day I learn how to hold them with grace as I patiently and painstakingly practice the art of kintsugi in an effort to find my way back to my whole self.