Thursday, January 11, 2018

Words Are Powerful


Random thoughts reeled through my mind as we navigated the final stretch of mountain curves on our way home from our last camping trip this past fall...
"the deeper I seem to go into the woods the more I am truly getting to know myself." This was new to me, profound and it stayed with me over the last few months.

Those thoughts returned to me today.

2018 has ushered in, ever so gently under the frigid temperatures in our snow covered New England. Winter is a peaceful time for me. Not everyone thinks this way of course so I tend to keep my love of it well wrapped and hidden. Winter brings me time to create and always leaves me with a inspired energy.

So... at the beginning of the New Year over the last four years I have chosen a WORD for myself and that word will be carried with me in a variety of ways as the days move forward and the seasons unfold. These last few years this has been my practice. Why? No big reason, it just works for me and gives me a focus I suppose. I am a daily journal writer, eclectic mixed media artist, cook & creative maker so all the while as I write, create, cook or birth things into existence I maintain the plumb line of my chosen word within all of the pieces of work that come through me. Hence the new word each year. It could get boring otherwise. :)

Choosing the word isn't really up to me. It, finds, me, over a series of weeks or days prior to the new year. Sometimes it glaringly comes right out and waves it's hands jumping up and down.... pick me, pick me!!! In years past the WORDS have been, BALANCE. ACTION. COMPASSION & LOVE... They all came at times in my life that I am certain were related to my own journey and path. They weren't a daily incessant task to tend to, vying to be front and center but, they most definitely were woven into the fibers of my life and still stand out in my verse, memories, color choices, textures, tastes and moments that are hard wired to my present and recent past.

My word for 2018 is EMERGE. This word came to me directly one day when all I could think of to write in my journal was this line.

"I am silent and overwhelmingly present. I can no longer just sit here being no one." EMERGE

Just like that. This other self that has been on the peripheral edge of so many "others", for almost fifty years is peeling away feet first, straight out of the woods. EMERGING

In my writing and in my life now I am seeing deeply and forging ahead. My life is lighter. I am free. Unhinged. An EmptyNester. I've begun to notice everything. There is no hold on me now and I can reach beyond where I have been tethered. EMERGE

Words are powerful. I am trusting this is the time and that all of who I have been is leading me into who I will become. Sheds from another life lie around my feet. Stepping out of the rippled fragments of what was layered and attached to so many I move away slowly and purposeful, shaking the last pieces of expectation and dried blood off of my boots and follow a new path.

A new path that only I can see and what I see, is beautiful and full of hope. EMERGE.

Cheers! Denice