Intentions – 2014

2013 was a year. There was a blazing sunrise following dark days and blessings were flowing. I couldn’t begin to summarize what the year brought me and so much of it is deeply personal, just as your stories are to you.

It was a year of metamorphosis. It was the year of the snake. I felt the light I hadn’t recognized for quite some time in so many thrilling ways.

While reflecting upon the past year and what lies ahead, I decide to ponder my intentions. Intentions lack the empty pressure I may have placed on resolutions of past years. Perhaps they are less rigid or specific. They are not confined to a checklist, with a pass or fail outcome, but remain fluid and flexible – promising.

Maybe intentions offer a bit more growth of self – holding space to welcome what may evolve, unanticipated.

What brought me here – every step, choice, and experience – doesn’t really need resolving. Each step taught me something, brought me to today. I’ve done what I could when I could with the best I had. No regrets.

My intentions for 2014 are a little less fat or fitness and a little more presence…

Follow my gut. Remain open to the path that feels natural and fitting to me, to what makes sense to me, what suits me. I’d like to resist imposing expectations upon myself, my life, based on a particular model of what lives should look like – what I thought my life should look like, rather. I’d like to chip away at the barriers that hold me in that place of comparison. Stuck. Let go of the voices that prevent me from following through with my inner wisdom, voice, or compass.

Continue doing things that scare me, often. An authentic revealing of self can be both terrifying and liberating. I’ve had moments of both. I’ve taken on adventures I wasn’t sure I could handle and many of them taught me just how wrong I was. I was capable. I lived.

Sharing your walk has been referred to as showing gratitude for your days. Our experiences shape each other, inspire each other, sharpen our vision, and widen our scope. Connection is my pulse. I look forward to opening doors and hearts in return for the ways others have done so for me.

Challenge my sphere of awareness, knowledge, comfort, and assumptions, to lives, people, lifestyles, paths, and stories different than mine. I hope to absorb the footsteps and experiences of others and blend them with my own, creating a new recipe of self each time. Expand in mind and tolerance and extend my support or gifts to others, whatever they may be.

Share my sentiment with others; express my love, my appreciation, and my gratitude to those around me. It is my desire for my babes to love and to learn to be comfortable expressing their love. I want them to grow ‘living’ kindness and compassion and honor others. Why is this form of expression so hard for so many to do? There are numerous reasons, I imagine. I’m willing to bet there is many a proclamation of love or friendship just floating around in minds and space, or at the tips of tongues, that have shamefully never been shared. I recognize, in the past, that I haven’t expressed near the level of adoration I had for loved ones. I will work to free those feels making them real and tangible – known. Felt.

It’s easy to feel like a square peg in a round hole when your life has changed. Familiarity and consistency build a kind of comfort or blanketing of protection. When the pieces of your life are shaken you feel exposed, sensitive, raw, un-rooted. With your senses heightened and vulnerable, there are endless options to fill in the blanks created through change and you have to be careful going about this. I want to learn to accept, value and honor my story as is.

Learn to love myself far beyond the skin, to love that which is not made up of a single fiber, but the ticking that make me, me. Love all the parts of self, even the parts that aren’t very pretty, the conflict. I want to love those pieces into acceptance, into gratitude.

Never ever stop making moments. I’ve heard the quote… “Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.” I’m going to keep feeling that rain as often as I can, not matter how “rainbows and puppy dogs” it may seem.

(For the record, I could also stand to lay off the sweets. A bit of separation wouldn’t hurt anyone.)

What’s on your mind for the New Year? I’d love to hear your intentions?

Cheers!
J