Welcoming Ease

Intermittently, I’ve chosen word of the year—it serves as a beacon to focus on throughout the ups and downs of a trip around the sun, a reminder of what is important to me at this time in my life. It fits nicely into a “to feel” list, too. Past words include emerge, expand, awakening, and charge.

In 2023, my word is ease.

After a difficult year, now behind me, and a year of big change looming ahead, I am craving simplicity, small and steady progress, and letting go of perfection and impossible expectations.

Ease is a permission slip to breathe and be. I have a tendency to complicate things with arbitrary self-imposed rules; this year, instead, I’m going to focus on embracing “good enough”. I’m centering rest, too, and my own imperfect humanity.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Mary Oliver, When I Am Among the Trees