five years ago I started some “new year” practices that have refined themselves over time. I begin the process in december, typically a couple of weeks before my birthday (that falls a little before christmas). while I am not one to really set ‘resolutions’ at the actual new year, I do like to take some inventory of my previous year and see what I loved, what didn’t work well, what thrived, and mostly to acknowledge what I have created over the last 365 days. so by the time my bday hits I typically have a new word of the year that becomes my guiding light (or likely my glaring reminder) of what I would want to create for the next year of my life. for context, my previous words of the year are below…
year 32: health
year 33: gratitude
year 34: wholeness
year 35 surrender
year 36 trust
so as I was approaching my birthday, I did some of the usual things I would do to help create my word of the year. at the end of all the different things I would typically do to help create my word, I was completely stuck. nothing came to me. nada. zero. nil. all the prayer, meditation, journaling, ritual burning of sage/palo santo/candles, and everything in-between lead me to a dead end. hitting a proverbial brick wall that no matter how often I stepped away from and came back to felt fruitless. nothing stirred within me to help find the word and in a way I wondered if I would even have a word of the year. and then, out of no where last night the word arrived.
my word of the year for year 37 is consistency. oof. looks like being 37 is gonna be a journey of responsibility, habit-building, and growth for me. here’s to a year of being consistent. 🖤✨
xoxo, m