Every month I do an audit and ask, you see them come in your inbox each month and it is, for me, so eye-opening the things I wrote the month prior and then completely forget the next month. I highly recommend it to see how full life is and how forgetful we can be and then, keep playing with the order of your to do and to be list.
I am taking a moment here to do the entire year, here are the prompts below. You can do it in this weird week before NYE and the arrival of 2025. Or you could it in March of 2025, there really is not a right time, it only has to be on your timeline. I do promise it will lift some of the post holiday haze and new year pressure and create intentions with reflection and choice.
XO
Reflecting on 2 0 2 4 : AUDIT
What is one word to encapsulate the year 2024?
RECKONING
What are 3 lessons I learned in 2024?
The only and most important person that is going to advocate for my overall health and wellbeing is actually me. I am in this body, I am the one creating stress and I am the one who creates time for rest. The responsibility is mine.
Patience really is a virtue. I took a whole 11 minutes yesterday to thread a needle. Why are the holes so unbearably tiny, though? The entire span as the seconds passed by and I kept missing the hole again and again - felt like my past year. Would I stay the course and thread the needle? Would I give up and wait for my child to get home and help me like she did the night before with her youthful eyes and empathetic heart? Would I yell? Would I cry again? And finally, I figured it out. And I have been figuring it out this year with so many failed attempts and rage moements and requirement of help from another. And maybe, just maybe, along the way I have become a tiny bit more patient and learning to bow to divine timing.
You’re going to have to do things you have never ever done before to heal. And it sure will not be how you think - it has to be something you would never ever have guessed. Like how I started working at a small wine shop in town one to two days a week in the Summer so that I would get dressed and have human interaction in the depth of a darker time I was navigating. Like how I lay down in the middle of the day every damn day to breathe and to remember I am in choice. Like how grief actually is all around and that is okay. Like how when my child holds tight to my right leg while I am making waffles, that can heal me - if I let it. Sigh, this life.
What are 3 celebrations from 2024?
I f*cking wrote an e-book! The core values e-book was a true practice in patience. An old pal emailed me asking if I should wait and combine my e-book series into an entire book? That would and will be the ultimate expression of patience and I am taking baby steps.
I am celebrating my body. My 40th year has brought down the hammer this year in waking up to what I was not acknowledging. Oh like how I kept putting myself second of fifth or seventy-seventh on the list to love, enough is enough. I am celebrating my body speaking up and how I have been really choosing to listen and respond with choice, support and … patience, even.
I think I cried every single day this year and this feels like a triumph. Some days tears of sadness, other days tears of joy, and some late nights within the book I was reading. I am always crying and it is part of my makeup and expression to cry so often. And crying is okay every day. My younger self just sighed a deep sigh that I wrote that and then, she cried.
Is there anything to release the grip on that you can leave in 2024?
I answer this question often and for me, it is trying to control or even have a tether to people’s perspective of me. I have got to let it go. Like really completely release so I can be free to express all of me and waste so much time overanalyzing everything I said in an evening or interaction.
Is there anything you want to continue to embrace from 2024?
I want to keep becoming the Mother my children need. In meeting each of my daughters, I have become someone different. The softening into the experience is something I will definitely continue … forever.
Now.
Take a full body breath.
I am grateful for this past year because:
I came, I saw, and I read a lot of romantasy. I befriended new parts of myself and made new friends. I cried, and so I became. And I am so alive.
Hand on heart, close eyes. Envision yourself turning the page and seeing the start of a new chapter. Take a moment to reflect on all you experienced this past year and then, begin the next chapter.
Welcoming 2 0 2 5 : ASK:
List three thoughtful words to create an intentional triangle of words for 2025:
EXPRESSION
GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT
DEEP CONNECTION
What do you desire in 2025:
I desire vibrance. I want the deep connection of my eccentric love of energy and expression to vibrate on my skin, in my beating heart, and within my community. I want to have a thoughtful practice that allows me to honor all the waves of my emotions and moon phases in the day to day. I will re-invigorate a practice of writing my own headlines and living my sacred life. I desire eye contact with my husband and children. I desire a continued cocoon-like home environment for my children to unravel, restore, be goofy and ask for help when needed. I desire the energy reserves and abundance to open my home for waffles or coffee, perhaps playdates and fun. I want to write as if it is oxygen. I want to complete my e-book series, write a poetry collection and continue to find myself in the edges of my ‘whale book’. I desire some sweet consistency this year, I really do. And I want to be an active participant in my vibrancy, the effort and the flow.
What do you not desire for 2025:
I don’t want to be on the computer all hours of a day. I don’t want to be addicted to my phone. I don’t want to be complicit in continuing a system that was not created for a mother like me, who is devoted to her family and her creative expression and her health and her wild. I do not want to live in scarcity. I do not want to live in fear because of what the headlines read in the news. I desire less inner drama, inner critics can take a bow and exit stage left for a long nap. I want to stop comparing my current identity to my past one, phew.
Tap all the senses, what do you want to feel in 2025:
I want to feel the warm-just-out-of-the-dryer blanket of self compassion wrapped around my shoulders and emanating relief to my skin, my heart, my soul and especially my ever-racing brain. Finally.
Close your eyes and imagine one day in 2025.
See yourself embodying your intentional word and the desires.
Let yourself be surprised.
Let yourself surrender.
From that vision, what are 4 goals you can write to spark 2025:
I launch a writing club and create discipline in my writing rhythms by Feb. 1.
I get outside for 3 hours every single day in 2025, I set a timer.
I have a book agent by June 13, 2025.
Chris and I go to Ireland for our honeymoon by December 1, 2025.
Close your eyes and place your hands up and say, “I am open to receiving”. Lay out the welcome mat for 2025 any way you know how and let the upcoming year know that you are ready now.
So good Jacki! As a mother, I can definitely resonate. Your words have always had a way of finding the places deep within the caverns of my soul that I didn't even know existed. Yes, all the way back to the Rock Your Bliss days. You've always been such a huge inspiration to me in remembering to follow my heart rather than getting lost on the path of all the shoulds. Excited to do this practice myself. 🩵