Reflection of the Year
Dear 2022:
You were a year full of lessons, experiences, challenges, and incredibly magical memories.
It is hard to put into words the growth I experienced, but the words do not matter right now, it is the feeling and knowing that carries me into the New Year.
My word for the year was Magical, and Magical in loud and quiet ways it was.
The highlight of the year for me and my family was our trip to Italy, 16 days away on a trip of a lifetime.
The moments, the memories, the time together, and the unforgettable experiences will stay with us forever. This had been a dream of mine for a while, and to finally make it happen meant so much. We must dream, and we must also do the work to get there. We were supposed to go a few years earlier, and we had to postpone and now it makes sense, my kids were a perfect age and we all had so much fun.
Our daughter graduating from College was another magical memory and moment that I felt fully present for.
She has started her career in Sales, has an apartment in the city and my baby girl has started her big girl life.
We love that she is local as she loves to come home to see us (and her puppies), and she and I were able to take our magical trip to NYC at Christmastime—something we have done every 5 years which we both so enjoy.
There was more magic, but it was that kind of magic that exists in the growth that I experienced in challenging situations. The year also presented me with some challenging situations both in business and personally. While not easy, I must say that I navigated as best I could, which has been important to me on this journey. There are lessons here and I don’t quite have them all or have all the lessons, but, I have leaned into my inner guide, also spiritually I lean on faith and feel guided and led through these challenges. I continue to navigate through this, and while I don’t have all the answers, what I do have is more clarity, and I take that and myself into the New Year with ease.
My experience at Canyon Ranch was another personal highlight and growth opportunity for me. It was both vision-casting and self-caring, such an important combination for all of us that want to live authentically, vibrantly, and in our power and potential. I was reminded how much I love that scene, how much I enjoy time to Retreat, and how I want to do more personally and perhaps encourage this in others. I have facilitated leadership retreats over the years, I have been practicing mind/body for over a decade, and the topic of rest and retreat to reset is something I do, I need and I want to share more with others. In 2022 I set an intention to have more Spa days, and I did—I want to grow even more in this and see how I can incorporate it into Living HIPP and inspire others to Retreat—even at home which is always a great ritual and self-care practice.
The year was filled with Yoga, I made it a priority and it remained that throughout the year. Yoga is my biggest tool for living my best life (among my foundation). I practiced a lot and consistently and that showed up for me during the challenges I faced this year. It was all so quiet, behind the scenes, and not visible (the challenges), however, my foundation supported me through these challenges and it is that to which I attribute my ability to stay the course.
The most difficult experience for us was losing my loving father-in-law, “Bumpa”. This was and is such a loss for our family and has demanded my attention through the Fall & Winter. There are days I forget and then remember and feel the pain and throw myself into a project to forget the pain. Being there for my husband has been most important as this loss is difficult for him. Seeing my kids lose this special person in their life is hard, but in the big picture, we also were able to celebrate an incredible man, a life well lived and we take him with us in our hearts forever.
This brought up some pain for me in losing my Dad, which brings up pain I don’t think I entirely dealt with years ago when I lost him. I go into the new year looking to do more healing, going deep and giving myself even more space to heal and expand which is necessary for an Empath like me. I have such compassion for others during loss, as I realize most of my adult life I have dealt with it, and it is part of who I am. Loss requires both grief and resilience, and those things always reside within, it is part of the human experience, and I am making even more observations and the need for even more kindness and care in the world.
My year of Magic was delivered in ways that were truly divine and in ways that I could not have imagined and did not feel magical but my eventual response was. I learned that magic exists in the small moments in the day, so while I had magical moments that were big and dreamy, I had more silent moments that were magical, unspoken, but felt in my soul.
We are healing. We are all healing from our own things and from the Pandemic which knocked us down or off.
It is a time of reinvention and in doing so, our world is different. Listen to your voice inside, follow your heart, believe, and know that you are being guided, even if you are not sure of the way. Just keep moving forward and let’s create more magic in 2023.