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Strengthening my resolve
Strengthening my resolve

Strengthening my resolve

Welcome to the last day of 2010, that fickle bitch. I had a cutesy post last year about the horror of 2009 and how 2010 had to be better. It was followed the next day by another cutesy post about my hopes for the new year. Heh. Little did I know. If 2009 was a crappy year, 2010 was the toilet paper. Hopefully 2011 will be the hand-washing in this rapidly disintegrating analogy. In my 37 years on this rock I have never had a year like 2010 and please sweetbabyJesusonapony let me never have one like it again. You can lecture me all you like about attitude, but this was the year things just kept happening to me, at me, and around me. I’m exhausted.

I have great hopes and plans for 2011, and you’d think I’d have a list of resolutions to accomplish them. You’d be incorrect. As a general rule, I don’t make resolutions. I don’t think I need a READY-SET-GO date on the calendar to make changes. Instead, I have a dream board I made this fall (and is already helping me in my goals) and a list of things I want to accomplish. Things like reading more, becoming more active in gifted advocacy (especially in parental support), and in general being stronger.

Strong.

That is my word of the year. No resolutions, no big huge honkin’ plans, just a word. I’ve considered tattooing it on my wrist but may just go for an awesome bracelet instead. I want to be strong. I’ve been told I am strong, that I’m a brick, a pillar. Someone to rely on, someone who can be strong for others.

But I know my truth. I know the voices in my head telling me that I’m not strong, that I can’t do something because of XYZ. So while others see me as a strong woman, I see myself as the opposite. Very few people are allowed to see that inner part of me. I came up with strong as my word of 2011 after working with my trainer on Tuesday. I had made some snarky flippant remark about myself and he just looked me in the eye and told me to stop it. That I was a strong woman and to quit telling myself otherwise, even as a joke. That I was incredibly strong physically, mentally, and emotionally. That the more I tell myself otherwise the more I’ll believe that lie.

I love my trainer.

So as I maneuver through 2011, strong will be right there with me. When I’m overwhelmed, I just need to remember that I’m strong and can handle it. When I’m facing a new weight at the gym, I just need to remember that I’m strong and can lift it. When I think I can’t do something because of XYZ, I just need to remember that I’m strong and will get through it.

One word is all the resolution I need.

Happy New Year.

18 Comments

  1. Go Jen! I have to say, we all seem to have those little voices in our head that nag at us and cut us down. The trick is trying to rewire our brains to ignore them and move towards the voices that tell us that sometimes good enough is just that- It’s good enough. Because really, the only ones judging us are ourselves.

    Jen is Strong in 2011! Yay!

  2. STRONG is a terrific word to take into the new year. Your trainer sounds very wise. 🙂

    Wishing you a hand-washing year, followed by … hmmm… lavender-scented lotion? Seriously, I hope that 2011 breaks the pattern of the previous two years.

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