Let the Words Fall Out...

I'm trying something slightly new this year: I'm not making a "resolution" for the new year.

My resolutions have always been more geared toward changing some aspect of my life for the better (and yes, that always involves reading) but this year I decided to take a different tack.

I adopted a word.

I heard about this on the Elise Gets Crafty podcast (I follow EliseJoy on Instagram and enjoy her immensely, despite the fact that she is the craftiest person ever and I am most decidedly not.)

Elise chooses a word every year, and this year her word is reach, as in getting out of her comfort zone.

I loved that idea, but I wasn't jazzed about that word. In typical Joy fashion, I pondered and wrote and bounced the whole idea off of someone who looked at me like I was loony, and I just couldn't figure out what I was wanting to say.

I wanted to say that I want to try new things, that I want to keep proving to myself that I can do things that I completely believe myself incapable of doing, I want to fall on my face and pick myself up and do it all over again.

I want to figure out how to work at this job that I love, and come home to my kids and not just collapse to the couch, but somehow still be that mom that used to occupy all of my time. That's a hard one-the girls are getting older, and while we still have so much fun together, they are completely resistant to the super fun games of clean your room and let's see how many vegetables you can eat.

I want my family to understand that I love them, that I am well aware that they make my life possible. I want to make time to spend with my friends, which has become somehow more difficult as our children have aged, which makes no sense but is still true.

I want to keep clearing out my house, shedding all of these things that we have somehow amassed, and be able to actually feel that my home is a sanctuary of things I love and cherish.

I mostly want to feel such joy in my life, I want to feel like every day is full of fun-there was such a stretch of my life that felt like existing without feeling, because feeling was just much too overwhelming-and having finally shed that weight, having embraced that grief for the healing and grace that it brought, and feeling like there is finally a new bend in this road just ahead of us-it's a bliss that I don't want to take for granted.

So, finally, after all of the overthinking that I do about everything, I came up with a word to encompass all of that.

Brave.

That is what 2018 is going to be for me. Brave. Every time I think that I'm going to look like a goon, or that I'm scared because I don't know what the heck I am doing, or that I'm overwhelmed by the idea that I am the only adult in my house, I am going to be brave.

I spent the past two years living, growing, and blessedly thriving through something that took me to my absolute nadir. The next bend in the road may be full of roadblocks, but so be it. 2018 is going to be glorious. Or not. But I can promise, it's going to be full of new adventure.

"She was brave and strong and broken, all at once." -Anna Funder