2020 wasn’t all that bad and I refuse to call it a dumpster fire…

In the beginning of the year, I chose the word “flow” as my word. I’ve been choosing a word for the year for a few years now and this word felt appropriate as I was feeling the familiar urge to control creeping back through my bones.

As the year progressed, I found “flow” becoming more and more difficult to achieve. I wanted to know where and how things would turn out. I wanted to feel certain as more and more things felt like they were falling apart (personally and in the world!)

Lately, I have been trying to find stillness to process all the memories and emotions that 2020 created. I realize that everything felt heightened as well a dulled at various parts of the year. For me, 2020 was the year where immense space was created. What some called a “dumpster fire” I refer to as a clearing, a time to release.

The more I released, the more life seemed to flow for me.

In the beginning of the year, one of the dreams I had been holding so close to my heart became a vapor when we received news of infertility. This sent me into a swirl of emotions. Through deep love and support of friends and family, I found flow again and slowly learned to reconnect with and respect the cycles of my body.

This news became such a gift as I look back because I saw how disconnected I had become from my physical being. Spending so much time in my head had become a place of comfort and yet, it also was a place of paralysis as I stayed fixed in thought not moving forward.

Our greatest pains have the potential to become our deepest insights.

I ended the year completing a 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training, which was immensely healing and beneficial in helping me reconnect my mind, body and spirit. I have wanted to do YTT for years and never found the “right time” to pursue it. A friend casually mentioned, Awakening Yoga Academy, over brunch one day and something inside me sparked and the timing felt perfect. After a year of grieving and feeling angry with my body, I decided to do something to bring me back into my body with appreciation, love and grace.

This year also marked the release of book #3! Holding my 3rd book, Sunrise Gratitude, for the first time was very special. I waited extra long for this book as shipping was unpredictable this year. I remember seeing it in the hands of a reader in Australia before I had a chance to see it. It was exciting to know it was real and that people were reading and connecting with it.

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 areas of great resistance. Instead, FLOW created so much room for the things that were meant to arrive. The more I trusted, the more hope took root.

As I look forward to 2021, I feel a sense of excitement and HOPE, which I chose as my word for the new year.

This is what I imagine HOPE to look like…

• New dreams
• More love for others and ourselves
• Welcoming serendipity as control is released
• Collective healing and growth for the world
• New perspectives and horizons
• Connection with DEEPER appreciation (hopefully in person)
• More acceptance of differences
• Recognizing possibilities instead of dwelling in failures

This year of flow was full of stillness and uncertainty and yet, it felt healing. Flow 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.

Life will always ebb and flow and the more we stay open, the easier it is to accept and grow.

Did you have a word for 2020? 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.

May this next year bring you peace and hope!