The first post after the new year is always a difficult one for me to write. I want to find the right balance of reflection on the previous year and hope for the new year. I want to share my goals and help you become clear on yours. And, I simply want to share my life and latest loves with you as I do in every post.
2020 was quite a year. It was filled with lots of loss, too much fear, various stages of distrust, not enough empathy, a number of endings, and more tears than many other years. It was also filled with resilience, love, new beginnings, and transparency. I mean, let’s be real. 2020 showed us people’s true intentions and real beliefs. It was a year that pushed us to grow in ways that some of us might not have been ready for.
That’s all so last year though, right? Well, yes. We are now in 2021 but have we really been able to let go of 2020 yet? There’s not some magic wall that goes up as the ball drops that separates us from our past. Instead, a door is opened that allows us to plan what to do as we cross over to the new year.
2020 was the first year that I chose a word to carry me through. I had no idea how much I needed it at the time. My word of 2020 was INTENTION. It served me very well. It helped me make decisions, it helped me set goals, it helped me develop content and, even was the inspiration for my first printable workbook, Goal Getting 101 Being Intentional About The Life You Want To Live. Intention is going into my word bank and will continue to serve me but out of the ashes of 2020 grew my 2021 word of the year.
This year, my word is COMMUNITY. Honestly, community is at the heart of my entire online presence. I started my FB groups, Instagram, and blog to serve the single mom community. As I began to connect with others online, I realized that single moms and moms in relationships have many similar concerns and my community grew. It is funny to say this but community is what helped me step forward every day of 2020. In a year of isolation connecting wasn’t only a perk of being online but a need.
This year, I want to focus more on building my community on and offline. I want to continue to support families, I want to continue to push for parents reclaiming their power in education, I want to stay sharing our fun finds and hopefully sometime soon start taking all of you along on our adventures.
I have a lot of changes planned for this year, professionally and personally. I know that I will be turning to my community to support and to share what I learn along the way. When I chose my word last year, I didn’t really expect it to last the full year. I thought it would be fun. I had no idea how it was supposed to work other than choosing a word. I still don’t but I want to share with you three ways I used it to keep me afloat throughout the year. These are the same ways that I will be using it this year.
- How does this serve my word? – Every time I walked into a decision I asked myself if the choice I was leaning towards served my word. Doing this allowed me to sit with my options and choose which one kept me aligned with the type of year that I wanted.
- Focus Point – I have a lot of trouble staying focused. This has been my entire life. I used my word as a way to bring my focus back at times. I used it almost as a mantra. As I repeated the word, I would focus on how the word helps me with the task at hand.
- Share The Word – I don’t like succumbing to trends so at first I wasn’t too keen on telling people that I had selected a word because I didn’t really think it would make a difference. Pretty early on though I remembered that there is power in words. I started sharing my word with friends and I felt a shift. It truly made a difference and I think it helped others almost as much as it helped me.
Do you choose a word? Does it last the entire year? What’s your word of 2021?
