Creating the life that you want in the coming year.
2024 has been quite a year. One of ups and downs. In many ways it felt like we finally shook free of the pandemic and the PTSD that many of us felt long after the restrictions were lifted. But then there was the stress of the election that seemed to drag on for far too long and then for many of us, the fact that the stress did not dissipate even when we finally knew the outcome. For me, the year was filled with many milestones. Logan finishing preschool and the kids getting on the same schedule by attending elementary school together. Which meant that I would get 19 hours of more time to focus on work and myself. Finally getting back to Maui for a lovely vacation over the summer. And then there was the one big shocker – my breast cancer diagnosis in August that changed my life quite dramatically and became a large focus in the final quarter of 2024. For the past couple of years instead of making resolutions, I have been picking a word that will set the tone for what I am intentionally trying to manifest in the coming year. My word for 2024 was powerful. I chose that word in hopes of stepping into my power when it came to the growth of Metta Mama, the yoga studio I run that is focused on pre and postnatal yoga. What I did not realize is that by the end of the year, the word powerful would take on a completely different emphasis for me and my reflection of 2024 would be focused on the power I have found within and the deeper understanding of what stepping into that power really means.
The idea of picking a word that will help you define your year was something that really resonated with me when I first came across the idea. Instead of making a resolution at the beginning of the year and then abandoning it one month later, a word allows you to set a tone for what you want to manifest in your life. In 2022 I picked the word abundance and we ended up moving to Marin, buying a special home in a magical part of San Rafael, and starting to work at Metta where I created the next chapter of my career. When I was setting goals or making decisions involving the direction of my life that year, I framed them through the lens of abundance. I was clear in what I was trying to manifest in my life and in that clarity there was a peace of knowing that I was focused on a very particular goal, but it was malleable depending on what the year brought my way.
And never has that rang truer for me than this past year. Last January the word powerful was mostly being applied to how I was approaching work. Being confident in my leadership of Metta Mama so it could grow into the leading perinatal yoga studio in the North Bay. And even though my diagnosis was not something I say coming, I was able to apply the word powerful when approaching my diagnosis and the way that I am choosing to tackle my health challenge. And although this took me a little while to understand, having cancer has allowed me to see how powerful my body really is.
When I was first diagnosed, the word powerful was not even in my vernacular as I thought about my situation. At first blush, a cancer diagnosis takes all your power away. You feel quite powerless when you are sitting in the Dr.’s office and they are telling you that you are triple positive, you will have to take off a part of your body to get rid of this cancer, and then follow that by chemo and radiation. It will be an assault on your physical, mental, spiritual and emotional body and you will feel like you have little control. And no power over the fact that your body has gone rogue and it is making you sick. But then you start to breathe again. You start to accept where you are and figure out how to work with your new reality. As I journeyed down the path of an active cancer treatment patient, I started to learn more about cancer, what it means, how it feels, and how to work with your body to create more balance and health. And I started to step back into my power. As I deepened my meditation practice, I began to understand even more about the power of my mind and how deeply connected our mindset is to a healthy body. I experienced moments where my limits were tested. My pain and discomfort seemed overwhelming at times. But I sat down to shift my energy and focus through meditation; my mindset shifted towards one of acceptance and my pain lessened. Blood tests right before my 3rd round of chemo showed that my liver enzymes were elevated so I spent the three weeks in between my treatment sessions focused on supporting my liver with Tulsi tea, giving up caffeine, and doing a very specific 3rd chakra meditation, and my liver enzymes were completely normal right before my 4th chemo treatment. All of this has made me feel even more powerful in my body and in my life than I did at the start of 2024.
Being powerful is a choice that we all have. Stepping into your power and harnessing the fact that there is only one you and we all have something valuable to contribute to this world is essential to embracing your purpose in life. Even when the world hands us circumstances that seem to take that power away, just remember that we all have the ability to find ways to take control, to harness the energy around us and to move forward.
As 2024 comes to a close, I reflect on the year and can see clearly that even though this cancer, my lifequake, was not part of the overall plan of this year (or of my life), it has forced such growth and awareness that I can not help but be somewhat grateful for this experience. And maybe that is the true definition of powerful, accepting where you are and pausing to meet yourself in the moment with clarity and confidence knowing that you are capable of almost anything when you approach it with an open heart and a curious mindset.
