This was a year of podiums. Of microphones. Of large screens and Keynote. Of placing an if-everything-goes-belly-up printed copy of my speaker notes on the floor by my feet. While my hands shook. My voice. The year of telling audiences things I once couldn’t tell myself.
A year of monumental vulnerability hangovers.
A year of failing. Painfully. Visibly. A yearlong required reading in failure first aid. And of re-learning again and again and again this: what I label – wrecked, facedown, cheeks blazing – as an horrific failure will often later shift to seem like something else entirely. Exactly what needed to happen. Getting taught what I needed to learn (again). A camouflaged stroke of good fortune. Not-so-subtle guidance.
This was a year of blue eyeshadow. Of Marty McFly marathons in striped hot-pink blusher, off-the-shoulder neon, and ripped stonewash booty shorts – of quite-a-lot-closer-to-god hair. A year of deadlifts and squats, packs and boots and blisters the size of small eggs. Tambourine-induced injuries. Ballgowns and joy-riding in Teslas. The pure sweaty joy of dancing in the dark in a room full of strangers. Of pohutukawa-lined beaches found at the end of clay goat tracks. And scraped shins. And feasting on ALL the foods because I CAN.
A year of Scheduling the Awesome. (Try it, it changes everything.)
A year flooded with new friends, and the kind of conversations so breathtakingly real they halt time. Of learning to deeply trust This Feels Important. Of starting to figure out what the heck self-empathy is, and why it matters. Of opening. Of changing my mind.
A year of discovering that setting the intention courage is an excellent way to ensure you will feel terrified and grateful in fairly equal measure. And that you will cry. A lot. From fear, from joy, from the overwhelming everythingness that shows up when you try to be brave with your life.
One more year, and my favourite of the three, to delight in what it is like to be well. Whole.