Word of the year: Love comes after acceptance
What would life look like if you loved yourself?
Not self-care bubble baths kind of love. I’m talking about true, deep love. This is a question I’m ready to find the answer to. I’m hoping my word of 2020 will help me. The word I’ve chosen – is love.
This year’s word and how things went
I chose acceptance as my word for 2019 (you can read all about that here if you missed it). A year on and I know I made the right choice. I needed to lean into acceptance more than I realised and it’s taught me so much. It’s changed me. When you live with a word so closely for an entire year it never really leaves you. My word for 2018, wholehearted was the same. Each year you build on the last.
So how’s it gone? Well, acceptance has left me more at ease than when it found me. That’s what I’ve realised when you turn to acceptance in times of struggle – it bring a sense of ease. A surrender. Moving through 2019 with acceptance on my shoulder has helped me accept so many things. I’ve allowed myself to grow and change in a way I would fight before. Now I embrace change and I’m not afraid of it as much. Instead of feeling as though I’m losing who I am, I remind myself the most beautiful part of being a human is that we’re always changing. Always growing.
I’ve practiced accepting situations for what they are, instead of spiralling into frustration because I feel out of control. I’ve walked away from manipulative and abusive friendships because I’ve accepted I deserve more. I’ve accepted my family for who they are and I’ve accepted I cannot choose the way they show me love. I’ve started to try and accept my body. This has been the most difficult of all but I’ve made more progress this year than I ever have. I’ve accepted what the universe has sent my way, both good and bad, and I’m leaving 2019 with a deeper level of understanding of myself, and others. All good things. All progress.
Towards the end of the year I began to understand that I also need to learn to accept rejection, as well as other people’s opinions of me. We all have our own version of reality. Rejection is especially difficult for me to accept because I grew up with an absent father. Rejection taps into the darkest depths of my pain and it can be unbearable. So unbearable that I won’t even take the risk. I know this only holds me back, but I’m hoping my word for 2020 will help.
How I decided on the word love
Finding my word of the year for 2020 happened in exactly the same way it did last year. It happened slowly and organically. I’m a big believer in the universe and a lover of the woo woo. I take comfort in believing the universe wants good things for all of us and if we open our eyes and minds, it has a way of sending us what we need (maybe not what we want, but definitely what we need).
The first time I started thinking about love as a word of the year contender was when I was out with my friend Emma for dinner. She’d been having a terrible time with bullies and we were talking everything through. She told me another friend of hers had given her a question to ponder which was really helping. The question was, ‘what would the Emma who loves herself do?’. I considered that question for days.
The next time love came knocking at my door was thanks to Nigella Lawson. She wrote a column for Sunday Times Style where she shared her own relationship with self-love. In this piece (read it in full here) Nigella talks about regularly asking herself what she’d do if she really loved herself. My imagination was sparked and I stated imaging how I might deal with things differently if I loved myself. I liked what I saw. I liked how those thoughts made me feel.
What love means to me
I know I’ve chosen a big word. Poems, films, novels, photographs, songs and paintings have been created around it for centuries. To me, love means compassion, patience, kindness, warmth and understanding. Love is a verb too, we do it. Saying it out loud isn’t enough.
Love is believing in someone when they need you to, it’s wiping their tears away when they’re struggling, telling them they’re doing a great job and it will all be ok. It’s nourishing them with good food and enough water, holding their hand, listening to them and showing up when they need you most. I’ve always thought of these acts as things I do for others, but I’m curious to see what happens when I turn the tables and do them for myself.
Love doesn’t just mean self-love to me, though that’s a huge part of it. I want to love myself so that I can love others better. I want to be a force for good in the world and love others hard. I’ve found the better the relationship I have with myself is, the better my other relationships are too. Everything seems to mirror the relationship I have with myself. It’s the foundation of my existence and the one I can never walk away from. We’re together for life me, myself and I. We may as well make the best of it. I want to try and begin rewiring my brain so it believes I deserve love. It struggles to accept that right now and this isn’t doing much for me.
What I’m hoping to get out of love
I’m hoping to love myself through situations instead of turning to my terrified inner critic who is in no position to steer the ship. I’m hoping that by responding to situations with love for myself, I’ll be kinder to myself and build a new armour of resilience. Being hard on myself serves no purpose and the toxic results are unnecessary. I want to remember I have a choice and I can choose a more loving path. I want to be able to cheer myself on, have more courage to take risks and be able to console myself when I fail before dusting myself off to try again.
Mostly I want to feel the warmth, security and empowerment that comes from having my own back. I want to feel like I’m allowed to fail and it won’t break me. I want to be a force for good in the world. I know my feelings towards others are a reflection of myself (everything is mirrored remember) and I hope that by showing myself love I’ll feel less negativity towards others. I don’t think of myself as a negative person but like any human, when I feel pain I can feel deep anger. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in therapy is underneath all anger is pain. That’s true of all of us. What if I could soothe that pain with love?
A few tips for finding your own word of the year
If you’re ready to ditch the new year’s resolutions and try a new guiding light, a word of the year might be a better fit. If where you are now is one island and where you want to be is another, the boat that will get you to your dream island is your word of the year.
Use a journal. Unless you instinctively know what you want your word to be I’d recommend doing some journalling around the topic. I like to use these simple prompts and you’re more than welcome to borrow them. It’s important to take stock and be realistic about where you are right now before allowing yourself to want what you want.
What do I want more of in my life?
What do I want less of in my life?
Imagine yourself a year from now and allow yourself to dream. What’s changed? How do you feel?
What’s the name of your ship that’s about to set sail to that island where you want to be?
What follows should generate a word that makes sense to you. The most important thing is that your word feels right. Focus on the feeling. You don’t have to be able to explain why, but you must feel it’s the right word for you. One of my favourite tools for end of year reflections is Susannah Conway’s unravel your year workbook. I tried it in January and I’m looking forward to working through it again.
The art in this post was gifted to me by the very talented Sophie Magern
Have you got your word for 2020 yet? I’d love to know what it is if you have.
