2022 who dis?

If you read my first blog post you’ll know that I don’t make New Years resolutions. I hate them! To me, it’s just another target I feel anxiety around if I haven’t completed it and well…they just aren’t for me. Instead, I pick a word that I want the year to be. Last year the word for me was joy.

I wanted to find it (ha, finding joy 😉), I wanted to live it and I wanted to be it - be JOYFUL! It was mid December when it all just kind of came to a realization. I was in a meeting at work and I could not stop smiling. My coworker asked me what was going on and in that moment I realized that I have never felt this happy, I have never been this happy for this many days in a row. I truly felt like in that moment I knew what joy felt like. After everything that happened over the last few years, after all the heartache and struggle and journey of the last 12 months, I found myself in a space of living joy.

I've sat back this week and really settled into reflection mode. Yeah sure there were peaks and valleys in this emotional rollercoaster. And I do feel like I still need to steps into joy to be able to fully live it everyday - but that's life.

I saw how powerful this past year has been by choosing joy every day and with a new year starting tomorrow, I really just want it to be meaningful again. So I've been asking myself, what do I want this next year to look like?

2020 was a year of isolation. A forced situation to look inward. We were all made to look internally and be faced with memories, traumas, pain that we had been pushing down for (sometimes) years.

2021 was a year of transformation. I know I'm not the only one who felt this way - all the posts I have been reading this last week all start with "2021 was the hardest year of my life..." We were asked to confront and transform the pain that we had been suppressing into learning and....joy!

2022 is the year of new beginnings.

I guess I could use the words "new beginning" or "new chapter" but that's not one word to work toward. That's not a single focus to me, it's not a feeling/emotion. It's the outcome. There was only one word that came to mind for me that really describes "new beginnings", and that's...love.

Nothing says new beginning to me more than the emotion of love. It's full of excitement, adventure, understanding, care...so many other emotions are packed into those four little letters. It can mean so many things and take so many forms that lead to opportunities. Just thinking about a year of "love" fills me with joy and excitement.

Now, I'm not talking about like relationship love or like the love of another (although that's a perk), I'm talking about just leaning into that big emotion. Being present and welcoming the opportunities that coming with those letters. I don't think we really realize how often we close ourself off to the emotion or feeling of love. It's big and it's scary.

In one of my very first therapy sessions (many moons ago) I asked my therapist what it felt like to be "in love". She looked at me funny but I was dead serious. She started off by saying it's not something you can describe, it's different for everyone. She went on to talk about how she felt towards her husband and what it was for her but it didn't resonate. I mean I want to find that love of another person and share that with them - but I also want MORE.

I wanna find those indescribable words and make them real - live them. I want to have the word love be more than a definition that you use to describe how feel towards someone, I want to live a life fully encapsulated by love. I want to be in love with me and I want to be in love with my life!

So with that...cheers to 2021 and to finding joy.

And, cheers to 2022 and to being in love with life.

🥂