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As I approached 2020, I intuitively knew that my word would be Bloom. As a flower lover, I LOVE the word bloom. As an enneagram 4, I cringed when I realized this beautiful word made its way onto most Word of the Year lists. (we Fours do not like to follow trends.) Even so, my gut beat on: bloom is your word.

And also, I was scared. I was scared because my words of years past had always seemed soft enough, and benign. Then, as the year would unfold, I would begin to realize how absolutely brutal the process of living out an innocent word could be. Being a lover of the word BLOOM scared me because i didn’t want to come out hating it, in the end. As a lover of fresh cut flowers, I went into January declaring this would be the year I had fresh cut flowers in my home at all times. THIS would be the year I planted beautiful flowering bushes in my yard. This would be the year my creativity blossomed! This would be the year that I found the things which made me feel beautiful and ran hard with them…

I was right there with everyone else, optimistically looking ahead at the new decade. The 20’s were incredible, one hundred years before, and we’d collectively had a string of rough years. Manifesting a beautiful new year, new decade, new ______________________- I danced 2019 away in my favorite bar, with my favorite guy…

The rest is mostly history, where 2020 is concerned. We all know how that went.

Regarding bloom…

I did begin to lose hope along mid-may. I had recovered from presumed covid. I had crossed the threshold of the one year mark since my daughter severed her relationship with me. That I had survived both things, and was not a damaged shell of a person did help- the truth was I was worn thin. I had watched a business venture I had poured myself into, tank. I saw my freelancing opportunities dry up, as the entertainment industry ground to a halt. Trips to see loved ones were cancelled. Isolation was setting in. My husband was hit with a substantial pay cut, and for awhile I wondered where we’d be sleeping in a few months time. (also… no flowers. The flower industry was hit hard. When flowers slowly made their way back into the supermarket world they were ugly and who could afford them anyway? not me.)

As the year continued its rampage, my mother’s cancer returned. Due to restrictions, I wasn’t able to be there for her. Her Alzheimer’s guaranteed she did not understand my absence. As a girl who spent her entire life wishing she could one day be enough for her mentally ill mother, I have become this passionate advocate for “my people.” She is my person and the thought of her spending the last days of her fragmented memory of me believing I didn’t care- it gutted me. In addition, missed birthdays, weddings, milestones… My losses and stressors were not any more significant than anyone else’s, but they were levelling.

For months I didn’t even acknowledge my word. We were at odds, as if the choice of the word itself had somehow promised me a year other than the one I had…

Sometime around September I took the courage to face the word. How did BLOOM look, in my year? I had laughed sarcastically to myself, as I pulled out my notebook.

When a seed splits wide open, and life begins to stem from it, is the beginning of a journey towards bloom. It takes an entire season, within the life of that plant- a season of growing and stretching, tearing and agony. Thirsty times, and burning ones. As mesmerizing as a time-lapse recording of a plant’s growth is, have you ever paused to consider what the real time process would feel like?

We love the idea of blooming… I LOVE THE IDEA of blooming… but from seed to petals bursting open, the journey is akin to hell.

Just like a flower, I reached my loveliest point in the last quarter. My mind was ripe with ideas, creativity, productivity and so much more. Things I could never have thought myself capable of months before, are now happening beneath the surface of what my online life shows. It is like a part of me CAME TO LIFE. I am networking every day with the most incredible women. Just as with the years before, I know the Words of the Year which proceeded 2020 set the stage for my journey with BLOOM.

I also know that BLOOM paves a step for what comes next, in this journey. I won’t lie, I am a little intimidated by my 2021 Word of the Year. I have known what my word would be since that afternoon with the notebook, in early autumn. Those three little letters revealed themselves to me and I shivered. Between you and me, I have been dreading it ever since. This new word, which I’m not ready to share quite yet, is a lot less benign. While it has the potential to be incredibly empowering, it also has the probability of undoing me. ( if that’s the case, it will be something that needed to be undone)

As a list lover, I thought I’d share some of my expectations for the year, verses a few of the unexpected:

Things I didn’t expect to do:

• develop an appreciation for cute face masks.
• Join the NAACP
• Have to choose between Trump or Biden.
• Spend 2/3rds of the year deep in a video game 
• Self publish a project.
• Expand my business creatively.
• Not make it to NM, AZ, ID or TX.
• Rescue a litter of abandoned kittens.
• have one die in my arms.
• Keep one.
• Fall out of love with going to the movies.
• Have to write out & formalize my ‘last wishes’, in case I died.
• Stop going to church.
• Share an office space with my husband.
• Unpack and resort my beliefs.
• Realize my country isn’t what I thought it was.
• Sell my beloved Kate Spade collection.
• Stop going out, almost entirely.
• Host ZERO parties/dinner parties.
• Only see my mother once, from the other side of a this plastic tent.
• Fall in love with liturgies.
• Stop working from my favorite coffee shop 1-2 times a week.
• Reprioritize & realign
• Find new and creative ways to hang out with the people I care about.
• Spend 10-30 hours on zoom, most weeks.
• Laugh more than any other year before, by a lot.

Things i planned on and succeeded:

• completing the first draft of my memoir.
• Working on a book proposal.
• Read more books.
• Collaborate with empowering women.
• Expand my reach, in order to connect with and support other women.
• Grow my platform.
• Expand my knowledge.
• Explore my creativity.
• Dance more.
• Write more notes/letters.
• Practice intentional stillness.

When you reflect back- how was your personal journey? Beyond the pandemic, supply shortages and unexpected isolations, how did you grow?

The first Christmas that I was a mom, found us with a sweet little four year old in our home. Though the adoption would take years to happen, and nothing would go according to hopes or plans, in those very early days life felt saccharine in the best of ways.

On that Christmas eve, as her chubby little cheeks rested pinchable perfect, breaths deep and peaceful, we set about to do the things that parents were supposed to do. We pulled out the gifts “from Santa”, which had been hidden in the back of our apartment closet, and began assembling, wrapping and displaying them. I sat, stuffing her embroidered stocking, filled with this indescribable feeling one gets when their moments far exceed anything they’d hoped for.

It was a beautiful time- precious between my husband and I.

We had been through so much to get there. So much grief and loss, while it still mattered, felt somehow worth the journey that Christmas Eve. The air was electric with something neither of us could explain.

As I stuffed the last bit of what would fit, into her stocking, a thrill shot through me…

What if, as a mom now, I was about to learn that Santa WAS real? What if, while we slept, he’d creep throughout our apartment disappointed that my husband had eaten his cookies and our dog had munched the reindeer’s carrots? What if other gifts, gifts we hadn’t bought, would appear beneath our tree? It was all at once ridiculous and thrilling. What if...

To this day, I remember the magical away that question felt. The real magic being both the question and the possibility. The even realer magic being the sleeping child on the other side of that wall.

“Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it’s Christmas.”

~ Dale Evans

Nearly a year later Christmas magic would show up once again. Our home had been the ninth one to this little girl, and on what was her fifth Christmas, she gently unwrapped ornaments on the evening we decorated our tree. With each piece she opened, her eyes would grow bigger. At times there were tears as she swam through the overwhelm of seeing decorations she remembered, and things she had helped pick out. That poor child had never known that feeling before.

This was the night she told us she no longer needed the suitcase she’d come to us with.

This was the first night she allowed herself to sink into the feeling that she belonged somewhere.

The magic of those moments superseded the questions of Santa, by a lot.

Once again, the Christmas morning stocking had too many belongings, so it sat nestled into the pile, on the couch. This would remain a tradition for years, borrowing its way into the Easter baskets months later.

Christmas magic would reappear here and there. For years it was in the very same jolly Santa we’d visit, each December. Sometimes it would nestle in sweetly within a snuggled-up favorite movie, Christmas light ride with cocoa or some other unsuspecting moment that would take my breath away.

The magic of my motherhood journey stole my breath often. And though a forever motherhood journey was not in the design for me, those beautiful frozen moments are there, and along with the tissue wrapped glass balls and stars, I unwrap them and remember. Sometimes things are hard. Sometimes we lose what we hoped for, and sometimes in the process we gain what was lost. We fall prey again and again to this one-set idea of how things are “supposed to be” and sometimes, they just can’t be.

Sometimes we have to let go.

In the releasing, we are allowed to keep the proceeding moments.

This year the holidays are finding most of us vulnerable, uncomfortable and different. Whatever you’re facing, it is ok to unpack the moments that hold light for you. While we cannot live in the past, or the what if’s, or the same- it is ok to visit the fragments reflecting life differently. It is ok to remember that moment, and allow that they happened to be a bit of Christmas magic all it’s own.

Happy Christmas, friends, to you and yours. Stay safe and make time to nurture yourself.

It is in those moments of self love, releasing of resentments and spreading kindness that we make room to let the light in. Today is Winter Solstice, the light is coming!

Sliver by sliver, the light is on its way…

~ M