by 
It always seems to happen around this time of year, nostalgia rises and the memories of the year flood in. Lately, I have been trying to find stillness to process all the memories and emotions that 2019 brought up for me. I realized that this year everything was experienced at a deeper level.
Now, I am a pretty deep person, I live in my head and my heart. I am always thinking and feeling. And yet, this year, I found myself going even deeper. In the depths, I found new ways to love, communicate and show up.
Surrender was a reoccuring theme for me this year and even when I felt like I couldn’t let go anymore, I was shown that I could. As my grasp became looser, my life became richer.
Dreams came true this year as well as some faded into memory. There was a constant pendulum of emotions as I saw my creations come to life as well as some fall away. This is the nature of choosing a creative life; some seeds grow while others never take root. The beauty lies in the ability to create over and over again.
Holding my 2nd book, Find Your Glow Feed Your Soul, for the first time was very special. It’s more beautiful than I could have imagined (thanks to Quarto’s amazing design team). Launching the book was different from the first time because I am constantly learning how to be an author.
Even with the critics, I learned to release my desire to justify and surrender to the fact that not everyone will be my audience. There is a certain freedom that arrived after that. I can still show up for my readers and share my voice.
I learned to love deeper as marriage continues to help me grow and transform as a human. Surrender helped me release my ego a bit more so I could be open to a new level of love. Getting married is an act of surrender. To welcome another person into your life so intimately, especially after years of doing it my way without thought is a beautiful and heady act of release.
I’ve learned new levels of forgiveness, comfort and wonder this year with my husband. We traveled for 67 days as an experiment to see if we could really take our businesses anywhere. Through the digital nomad experience, I learned that not only can we work anywhere, but that we can overcome difficulties fairly quickly.
Our time away was magical, difficult, exciting and inspiring. I loved traveling all over Spain and Italy with Nate. He is an amazing travel partner and his sense of wonder is one of the things I admire most about him. Even with missed trains and lost luggage, he rose to each occasion with calm. He doesn’t dwell and moves forward quickly.
Coming home to our 1 bedroom apartment felt amazing. The place that feels too small at times, was the place we longed to be. I’m learning that roots are a good thing and that I can be grounded and free simultaneously because they are both a state of mind.
Every year, my belief that everything I need is already on its way becomes more solid. There were things I thought I needed this year, and they only became points of resistance and remnants of failure. Instead, so much room was made for the things that were meant to arrive.
As I look back, I am overwhelmed with gratitude and peace. This year was exactly what it was supposed to be. This year was hard in so many places: hard work, hard conversations, hard realizations. Surrender isn’t for the faint of heart. And yet, 2019 was also pretty magical and that is how I want to remember it.
As I look forward to 2020, I feel a sense of calm knowing that I am prepared to hold loosely and allow life to flow; which happens to be my word for the new year.
This is what I imagine FLOW to be…
- More Stillness, Less Anxiety
- More Love, Less Judgement
- More Experience, Less Scrolling
- More Laughter, Less Pride
- More Reading, Less Screens
- More Gratitude, Less Wishing
- More Acceptance, Less Resistance
This year of surrender was the most productive and successful year of my life. Surrender proved to me that I don’t need to be in control of everything because when I release, all the goodness I can’t see is allowed to fall into place.
It’s good not to always know what’s around the corner, thats where wonder will always abide.
Did you have a word for 2019? I’d love to hear what it was. I hope your year was filled with magical memories and that through the hard stuff, beauty emerged. May your reflections of the past year be filled with wonder because no matter how your year transpired, you are here and that is amazing.
