Wise(ish) Words for the New Year.

*written in 2018, but feels weirdly relevant now.

It’s been quite some time since I’ve written on here, but it’s also been quite a year.

Personally, this year was a huge puzzle and words were the pieces. *Fair warning, this may not be super relatable to you, but I think I needed to write it.

I’m realizing lately how weighty words are.

Not just in their meaning, but physically.

From an emotional standpoint, I’ve always been familiar with the weight and will that words hold and the ability they have to move and shake a heart. But it hasn’t been until the last six months or so that I’ve been able to physically feel their weight right against my bones.

I’ve been walking around carrying the weight of millions of words I want to string together to create something meaningful, something honest, something so close to my heart that I feel like I can reach out and hold it. But somehow, this season was absent of writing for myself. Absent of poetry and musings.

And I was uncertain why.

Perhaps it was easy to play hide and seek with the excuse of being too busy. Too tired. Too distracted. Or maybe I was afraid of what feelings the words would find.

Sometimes it feels like everyone is playing this game of hide and seek.

And we keep wondering why we can’t find who we really are. But we find ourselves when we just set stuff down and look for each other. Today I am in my favorite coffee shop, wearing my favorite yellow sweater and I am setting some things down. I am sorting through these words.

I am looking at people around me and wondering about their hearts, about their backbones—how they are holding up today. I am thinking about how they are a home to stories, how many each person must have. How all of them have loved someone and belly laughed and clung to a hand. How all of them got up today and chose to try again. How all of them have lost a sock and burned a slice of toast and laughed at their own joke. I’m seeing the humanness of it all, the common dominators, the silly similarities we carry around. And I feel inspired, and entirely certain.

These very words describe how I feel right now.

I’m leaving this year with a really full heart. This year has been butterfly stomachs, honest cries and new faces that feel like old friends. It has been many tough, but necessary goodbyes that have carried me into this moment; to this space I’m holding now. It has been learning to let go of the heaviness, tuning in to the nature of others and navigating the mazy hidden corners of new beginnings. It has been a year of learning to find inspiration around me even when I’m struggling to put the pieces together. I’m thankful, grateful, and giddy knowing that I can feel and feel and feel and not know what any of it means—but when I write it all out, it makes sense.

I’m not trying to hide from the tough stuff anymore, I’m also avoiding sitting down in it. I’m glad to be where I am—glad to feel and experience and know. I admire our human ability of knowing pain and heartbreak but being able to step into joy. Lately I’ve been hopscotching into it – finally feeling contentment under my toes, finally going back the girl who knows who she is. I’m so happy to sit down with her, to sort, to sift, to remember. To finally feel certain.

Sure, I am still figuring things out. But I’m thrilled to end this rather confusing year feeling certain of who I am— aware of the gentle heart that beats inside of me.

And sure, writing these days may seem tougher than it used to be. But like a long game of hide and seek, it’s always magic when pen touches paper. My kindergarten curiosity still bursts when it sees what it can create on a page, just by tuning in to the patterns of my heart.

These things—words—they are something weighty, they make up so much of what I am.

They deal with me— patching up wounds, holding parts of me together. In seasons of loneliness, transition and growth, they have always given me the gift of learning who I was.

I hope that in the new year and the years to come, I always have the guts to pick them up and put them on paper.