Abundance. Flow. Energy. The words came easily as I wrote them down. Truth, power, transform, evolve, visible, clarity, intuition, and more. Some seemed close, like visible, emerge and become, but they weren’t quite right. I paused in my search for my word for 2022, setting the task aside for another time. The new year was still over a week away, and surely the correct word would find me as had happened the past two years.
Letting go of something you have loved and nurtured for so long is not easy. Recognizing you don’t have the energy or patience to continue nourishing it as you once did is not easy either. Yet, that is where I find myself today. After building a business and guiding it with care for thirty years, today is the day I let go. Today it becomes someone else’s obligation and no longer my weight of responsibility.… Someone who will have the energy and fortitude to continue guiding it, making the adjustments as needed with the tender loving care it deserves.
Change for me has been a scary concept far too often.  I am slow to relinquish where I am and slow to embrace the new.  Slow to take the next step and move out of the comfort of the known. Yet change is one of the constants in life. It is with us everyday from the hands on the clock moving to each breath we take.  Each moment is different from the next, each inhalation and exhalation different from the one before. Â
As Thanksgiving Day approaches my feelings about the celebrations surrounding it are very different than they have been in the past. I have come to understand the history I was taught surrounding this day is a bit skewed, having been presented from a very narrow point of view. A view that represented a small portion of the people inhabiting this place we call America and while it may be how some experienced their arrival and celebration of this new world, it is not representative of all the inhabitants nor even the majority. And so I question, what does Thanksgiving Day mean for me this year, a year in which the world I once knew no longer exists?
There are some days and times that stand out in my memory that I will always hold dear and never forget. The night I met my husband, the day I graduated from high school, the day my oldest niece was born as well as the night my first son was born and the morning my youngest son was born. All happy events. All life changing events. Â
My childhood is long past and is but memories, catalogued like still pictures in a picture album. Rather ephemeral and elusive most times, I don’t give it a lot of thought in my day to day activities.  Then something happens and portions of it solidify, eliciting emotion that I thought was long gone, reminding me of experiences forgotten and buried. Reminding me that in getting on with the business of growing up and becoming an adult, my childhood didn’t go away and is still very much a part of this grown up version of me.Â
This is not my story to tell, but it is my turn to listen.
It is my turn to witness.
It is my turn to understand another’s experience may not mirror mine.
It is my turn to hold space so others’ voices may be heard.
It is time to join my voice with those that are trying to be heard.
~Act as if what you do makes a difference. IT DOES.~