Word of the year

Since I’m not a fan of resolutions, but I am a fan of harnessing some of the reset energy of a new year, I have sometimes picked a word of the year. I haven’t in a couple of years and thought it was time to try again. I went through the exercise and narrowed it down to Balance, Resilience, and Intention – all pretty words that resonate for me. The next step was to ruminate on them for a bit, and my brain noped out of those and my real word emerged:

Self

Am I going to show up for myself this year? And how? My inner critic hates this word, hears “selfish” instead, but my inner critic is a bastard I need to learn how to tune out. A hard truth I’ve already discovered is that I play the role of caretaker for one of my abusers, and I play the role of “excellent employee” and get way too much of my self-worth from “doing a good job” and “contributing to my team”, all while putting mySELF last, always. In previous years I’ve worked on my connections to other people, and I still feel that’s very important (even though I’ve nuked most of my close friendships since the pandemic) but I know, without a doubt, that everything has to start with me if I ever want that to work. I need to actually put my oxygen mask on before assisting others. 

I need to take care of myself. I need to challenge myself. I need to learn to actually love myself, and then I need to treat myself like someone I deeply love.

But first, I have to go play the part of an excellent employee, but with my word of the year everywhere I can see it.