Happy Birthday 2013!
It's just past midnight on New Year's Eve. The girls are asleep, I've kissed my husband, fireworks are booming away outside, a wine glass waits patiently at my feet. I'm grateful for this quiet celebration after returning from holiday travels.
I know many creatives who choose one word going into the new year to serve as their guide. I've practiced this ritual myself for years and even make tangible offerings to support your words. I've noticed that I also feel somewhat limited around the pressure of choosing just one word and wonder if you do too.
Why choose just one word? Or why not have monthly guiding words to support the one word? was my thought. A couple months ago I had an idea to offer a newsletter that would offer my readers and those who signed up a different word delivered straight to their inbox each month along with a downloadable photo incorporating that month's word as a reminder for personal use. A word of the month club, I suppose.
With all that took place in December (more on that soon) I found that I just couldn't get it together in time to make the offering, automate and promote it. After going back and forth a bit whether to scratch the whole idea or not, I asked myself if it had to be offered only as a newsletter and of course that answer was no.
And while I may very well still send these out as monthly newsletters, I have also decided to post a word here at the beginning of each month that will serve as my guiding topic. I invite you to use these monthly words as your own guide for journaling, blogging, etc., or choose ones that call out to you.
While I do have a chosen word of the year that I will be posting about soon, my word for January is RELEASE. I'm feeling that I can't properly manifest what I am wanting for 2013 without properly releasing 2012 with love and grace. I also feel it may take me the entire month of January to properly release 2012.
Release this month means for me letting go of what was to create space for what will be, while remaining rooted in gratitude for what is. It means processing loss and breaking some generational patterns. It means continuously purging the physical items that always seem to find their way into this home. It means facing the scary places that I often don't want to look in the eye and telling the truth about what no longer works in both my business and my life.
It means cleansing, clearing, stripping down and getting naked in a spiritual sense. It also means releasing any self-judgement I have around these areas and diving in with loads of love and heaping helpings of self compassion.
I don't enter 2013 with stars in my eyes, I know there is much work to be done and unexpected surprises in store. I am looking to expand my business in larger ways this year. I'm looking to play much bigger than I have been. What I am discovering is the path to entrepreneurship is a deeply spiritual one and the higher you want to rise your life/business the deeper your soulwork becomes.
This entrepreneurial path can be met with great resistance, after all if it were easy everyone would be doing it as the saying goes, eh? But that is simply it, each of us can do it, we just need to be ready. And being ready begins with letting go. And letting go is hardly ever easy.
Change isn't warmly welcomed by the faint of heart or those married to the status quo.
Releasing what weighs us down so that we may rise up to meet our truest selves, this is our continuous work.
May I rise up to be the change I wish to see in 2013.
(this image may be downloaded for your personal use, my request being that if you share online to link back to this site.)
Stacy, I think a word a month is a wonderful idea and will help me become more focused on my goals the entire year. Would love to incorporate this into my Art Journal along with some photos to illustrate it!
Posted by: Sharon Gollman | 01/01/2013 at 03:22 AM
I too, have difficulty choosing one word for the year event though I have done so. I would welcome a monthly word and deeper reflection on that word each month. I love what you have written here- it reaches out beyond the page. xo
Posted by: Eileen | 01/01/2013 at 07:18 AM
Beautiful idea Stacy! I look forward to the freedom and reflection of pondering a monthly word in 2013 xo
Posted by: Joanna | 01/01/2013 at 10:10 AM