Daily Archives: January 1, 2016

2016: One Word

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bestnineThere’s a website (2015bestnine) that will look at your Instagram account and make a collage of the nine most liked images from your account for 2015. The above is mine. I’m a little surprised there’s no pictures of dogs, and only one food picture, since it seems like those are the kind of pictures I post the most.

I’ve been doing lots of year end things like this lately. Crafting year end reviews, and cultivating new year intentions. Letting go and looking forward. In a meditation this morning with Adreanna Limbach’s 31 Days of Devotion program, I contemplated the suggested question “what do I feel devoted to this year?” I was surprised and not surprised by what came up. There was nothing I hadn’t expected, but I was caught off guard by the intensity of my devotion in regards to some of the things on my list.

  • Health and well-being of my body. The intensity of this one was so strong. The desire was deep to care for it, let it rest, give it lots of water, feed it good food, take it on walks, stretch it, do yoga, lift weights — to be rested, well-fed, and strong, to feel good.
  • Reading and thinking and practicing. This is both in relation to my Buddhist studies and doing for the simple joy of it.
  • Intimacy. This in particular to my relationship with Eric, continuing to explore the ways we can be closer, familiar and connected and content.
  • Joy. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m realizing that when I lost Dexter I let my joy go with him. I’ve been so focused on the bad things that have happened over the past decade, so caught up in preparing for the worst and working with the hard stuff, that I lost my sense of joy. I’d like to open some space for it, invite it back in.
  • Writing. For this blog, for the book I’m writing, for publication elsewhere, for the fun of it.
  • Teaching. Yoga, my Wild Writing Crazy Wisdom workshops, and some online classes — both in service to my students and for my own sake.
  • Simplified, beautified space. With our bathroom remodel, I realized how good it feels to have a beautiful space, beautiful things, and to get rid of what no longer serves us. I want all my space to feel like that — cleared out and full at the same time.

After having picked a guiding word for the past four years, I wasn’t sure if I would this year. Last year’s word didn’t turn out like I expected, and one didn’t seem to be coming to me. I signed up for Susannah Conway’s Find Your Word free class, but I put off reading the emails, doing the work. I thought maybe I just wouldn’t have a word this year.

Then I went on retreat with Susan Piver, and she talked about the necessity of our writing and meditation practices having a path quality to them. I’d been feeling a longing to deepen my Buddhist studies, having taken refuge vows a year ago, so the idea of cultivating a path quality in my life, in my other practices, was very appealing.

I kept coming back to “path” as a possible word for 2016. For the past few days, I was planning to work through Susannah’s emails to be sure, but after listening to Adreanna’s video this morning, practicing with her, listening to her talk about devotion, I knew path was right.

pathwithtextPath carries with it a sense of devotion — love, loyalty, and enthusiasm. It’s commitment, immersion, dedication, discipline, and joyful effort that springs from a place of love and attention. On a path, there’s a clarity of direction and intention, but also unexpected obstacles and surprising beauty. I show up, open up, stay with what arises without an agenda, thus sinking deeper into my innate wisdom and compassion, experiencing my life more fully. I encounter clarity and simplicity, ease and contentment, stability. It’s a good word.

Nourish: My One Word End of Year Review

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nourish2015The last time I made a New Year’s resolution (the same year I started this blog) it was “to be a better friend to myself.” In the years before that, I was always resolving to lose more weight, exercise more, read more, watch less tv — all the typical ways of improving myself that never worked, and if they did, never stuck because at the heart of those wishes was the belief that I was broken, that something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t good enough already.

In the years since that vow, I have instead picked a word to guide my year. A mantra of sorts, a reminder of what I want most, what I want to cultivate. I have picked retreat, freedom, home, and this past year was nourish. As is usually the case, the year didn’t turn out at all like how I expected.

I picked nourish because of its double meaning: to feed and to cherish. I imagined a year in which I would reach some optimal level of health and well-being. I felt like I had a solid foundation, had done the work and was standing on solid ground. Instead, I spent the year in a cycle of illness and injury, some of which I talked about here and some of which I didn’t. I was laid low.

It was so confusing to me, considering my intention, my wish to cultivate strength and health. Instead, nourish for me meant feeding and cherishing from a much deeper place. Any one of my issues carried the threat of being long-term, even chronic and ongoing. I had to confront the impermanence of my body directly. The year was about strength, but rather than a kind that allowed me to do extraordinary things, it was the kind that enabled me to endure suffering, the kind that kept me from giving up, the kind that cultivated healing.