One Little Word for One Year

Instead of making resolutions for a the new year of 2010, I started with just one little word. Just one word that would be with me during the year and that would be my intention, my guide, my direction..


The word I had chosen for 2010 was CHANGE. This was something I desperately needed. My life was completely stuck and I noticed that with the New Year 2010, I stood at the same place in life as in 2009, which was almost the same as 2008. Can't remember how 2007 was, but it must have been pretty much the same as well.
So CHANGE seemed to be the right word for me in 2010.

And it was.

That little word changed my life in a way that I could never have expected. It did not happen in an easy way, absolutely not. It happened the tough way.
My marriage of over more than a quarter of a century - yeah, that long - dissolved in a divorce. Hard, but it was the only solution to end years of a very unhappy life. There were just no repairs possible any other way, I tried. I tried for too long..
Along with that, my weight dropped 3 dress sizes as well - which was a very welcome change! And for the very first time in my life, I started to live on my own.

These were the most apparent changes. But underneath the surface, more subtle changes happened, just because I allowed them to happen.

It has not been an easy year. I could honestly say that this was the hardest year of my life. But my life turned around when I opened myself up for change.

The power of one little word.

And now with 2011, it is about time that I find another word for the year to think about, meditate upon and dream about.I started thinking about it some weeks ago. There were several words that came to me and which appealed to me in different ways.

Since I felt that the influence of CHANGE was pretty strong in 2011, I feel that I need to be careful in my selection of the word for 2011. And the best way for me to ponder about things and work through them, is expressing them in an art journal. So I took out an empty sketchbook and started this first spread, a looking back at 2010.

One little word.