At the end of 2018, I made a post about my word of the year–the theme, if you will, on which I wanted to focus my energy. For 2018, the word was “Renaissance.” I was just out of college and wanted to be “Reborn” into someone new.

I wrote this about the word of the year for 2019:

“For 2019, I think my word of the year will be “Release.” I have changed my life for the better. Now, it is time to let go of all the pain of the past.

“It is going to be a challenge, but a worthy one. I want to be able to forgive and forget, to move on, to let it go.

“I need to stop indulging in escapism and bottling up. I need to learn how to feel my feelings, acknowledge them, and let them go. I need to learn how to let go, how to move on, how to accept that people don’t change and things don’t change and all I can change is myself. I want to be able to let it all go. I want to be able to have my mind free of worry, both about the past and about the future.

“My worrying is the biggest threat to my life. It threatens to ruin job(s) and relationships all the time. I need to get a hold on it, and the best way to do that is to learn how to release.”

Did I succeed?

I think so.

I wrote a poetry memoir, and I released a lot of what was stuck inside me in those poems. Sharing them made me put into the world that which was stuck in my head for so many years. It was freeing.

While I still have pain, I have a lot less of it, and that’s really all you could ask for. I’m doing better at meditating and growing. I feel like a more completely healed person.

I think I did a good job of releasing.

So what next? What for 2020?

Well, I decided that I am done with my past. I wrote it out, I got it out, and–while I’m still going to try to get those poems published, which would be rad–I’m moving on. Enough of focusing on the past, enough defining myself by my fading pain. It’s time, finally, to take my healed and stronger self and catapult into my life, myself, my future.

Speaking of “stronger self,” well, that’s it. Strength. Strength is my word of the year for 2020.

I am interpreting Strength like the tarot card strength. An inner strength. A feminine strength, based on respect and the kind of power that doesn’t come from violence. I want to be strong. I want to be a force of nature.

Like this waterfall I’m getting doused in.

I want to be able to be strong when I need to be, but gentle when I need to be, too. I want to be like water.

I have a lot of barriers to break through this year. I am taking three grad classes and doing a ton of editing (did I ever tell you guys I work for a book editing company, now? It’s so much fun! My days are filled with books<3), all while working my day job and tutoring creative writing. I have so much going on it’s crazy. I need to be strong to handle it all.

And that strength is already in me. I think I can use my newfound powers of release to bring it out.

Happy New Year, everyone. Let’s kill it.