One Word for One Year: Reflections
(Inhale)
No one prepares you for the emotions and thoughts that grief can bring to you across a year, without warning, and yet, in the most beautiful of ways, change you. Let me explain.
(Exhale).
You’ve seen it - online challenges that push you to take hold of a word or phrase to define the year ahead for yourself. One word to support your actions, thoughts, beliefs, and changes. One word to help you analyze the way you look at challenge, triumphs, and life. For most (I assume), the chosen word is grounded in this pursuit of happiness, simplicity, and love, and I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t want those same things. And yet, I waited for 2022 with a grieving and heavy heart. The word I walked forward with? Rearrange.
Over the last year, I’ve used our blog to share with you my reflections as an athlete and coach on how my word showed up in my training and coaching, making connections as to why our sport is powerful for more than just physical reasons. But alas, we are more than the gym. So, here’s what I’ve learned (and truthfully, am still learning) from this past year of walking with one word in head, hand, and heart.
Grief brought me brokenness. It is hard to watch something you or a loved one thought you wanted break, splinter, and whither over the years. But I’ve rearranged my thinking and understanding of the word broken to now know that breaking can be beautiful, if only we let it be.
Grief brought me duality. Have you ever experienced happiness and sadness in the same moment, or at the same event? Grief placed situations at my feet that allowed me to experience both emotions in the weirdest ways. I rearranged the way I dismissed feelings; instead, I welcomed them, like visitors, taking each lesson like a house warming gift. Just for the record - it is ok to be sad, my friends.
Grief brought me vulnerability. It is not easy to shed light on the insecurities, bruises, and fears we carry or carry alongside others. But, I’ve come to learn that to be vulnerable is to be brave. I shared pieces of myself with old friends and new, so they could better understand the pieces of my story that make me….well, me. I am learning how to rearrange the voice in my head that tells me to quiet down for those around me; when the reality is, my voice helped others this year, and yours could too.
Grief brought me strength. In the same way that CrossFit has shaped and molded my physical and mental strength, so has grief. It is incredible what the human heart is capable of when we build the conditions for it to be simply resilient. I’ve rearranged my expectations for my own strength and the ways in which it appears in my life. I have been surprised, time and time again, by my inner strength, the strength I gain from those around me, and the strength from story telling.
Grief gave me boundaries. I have a much deeper understanding of what is truly important to me, why saying “no” to people and events is actually ok, and how to be steadfast in my passions and pursuits. Learning to love yourself and hold tight to those boundaries is freeing, but…I had to rearrange the mirror I was looking in for this to start happening.
The rearrangement that took place during 2022 was painful, exhausting, joyful, fun, but most of all…breathtaking. I am meeting the person who I was designed to become by leaning into the new, getting stuck and pushing through the difficult, and delighting in the simplicities and complexities that life offers day in and day out.
I’ve had a few people reach out and ask about the word I will carry for 2023. It’s never easy to land on just one word, but rather like the one I am stuck on. This year, I walk forward with the word kind. This word could be a verb. This word offers variety. This word invites curiosity and visionary thinking. I’m excited to see how my rearrangement of the past will impact the kind of person I grow into over the next year. I’m even more excited to do that with all of you.
What’s your word? How will you reflect on it throughout the year? Can you bring it into the gym, and let it change the way you see and approach your fitness journey? Feel free to share your word with me when we cross paths. Until then, as always, I’ll see you at the gym :)
Big Hugs,
Coach Kady