The Phrase That’s Guiding My Year

Happy New Year, or really, welcome to full-on January—the early darkness, the stormy skies, the post-holiday quiet and the freshness of a whole new year ahead of us.

I don’t always have a word for the year, but sometimes I do, and this is one of those years. The phrase I’m holding close this year is GROUNDED PRESENCE.

When I say grounded, what I mean is non-chaotic, non-dramatic--not sucking up all the oxygen in the room. There have been times when my life and my needs and my whatever have definitely taken up all the oxygen in the room. There have been seasons when my grief and anxiety eclipsed almost everything else in our world. And there were definitely times when my health challenges—both mental and physical--meant I had very little to offer the people around me.

Being grounded, to me, is about intentionally managing the drama and chaos of our own inner lives so that we’re not inflicting that drama and chaos on to the people in our orbit. I want the people around me to feel calmer and safer after having been near me. I want them to feel seen and listened to in a meaningful way, like they can rest a little more deeply in my presence.

When I say presence, what I mean being is willing to make hard choices about time and pace so that I can really be all here in my own life. For me, it means working less and traveling less, in favor of being home for more bedtimes, for slow Saturday mornings together, for last-minute walks to the diner and reading together and rewatching the Office—again ;)