To begin, begin

{be.gin}
perform or undergo the first part of (an action or activity)

It’s been a few years since I intentionally chose a guiding word for the year. Somewhere amongst the last two years, it fell by the wayside – I think because I was so busy pretending that everything was OK that trying to live intentionally and honour myself felt too out of my depths. But I felt a stirring since the beginning of December to go back to where I was.. three or four years ago when I was true to myself and trying to move on from the last bout of depression, a time when I almost was on the way to finding myself.

I’d been thinking and reading and waiting for a word to pop out to me… trying to not look too hard, or overthink it. Waiting for the word to choose me. And then… the Wordsworth quote popped up in my Pinterest feed

To begin, begin”

I felt my heart jump when it saw it… begin… because, really, that’s all I have to do. BEGIN. From rock bottom, it can seem there is no way back up. The simplest of tasks have seemed impossible. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve cried out ‘I can’t do it’ in the last three and a half months. How many times I’ve said I give up, that it’s all just too hard.

How many times I’ve been told I can, take a baby step, make a plan, one thing at a time.

And I found I could if I just started in the first place. All those things I believed I could never do, I managed – standing up for myself, telling my husband to move out, listening to what my heart wanted, sorting finances out, figuring practicalities, reaching out for help, stopping drinking…. the list goes on, but by simply remembering to b e g i n, I found that I could do anything.

So when that quote popped up, I knew it my the word for 2017. A year of new beginnings, the first year in almost fifteen that I have been single. The year that I launch this site, the year I begin to stand alone, begin to be truthful – to myself as well as to others. The year that I become who I was destined to be – and while I’m still fearful, wishing I could hide away, I know that if I follow my heart and simply begin, then I will get where I want to go.

And then yesterday morning, on the first day of a whole new year, I woke early, the kids still sleeping after seeing midnight in with me, and snuggled on the sofa with the first coffee of the day for a little reading time. I’ve just started Glennon Doyle Melton’s “Carry On, Warrior” and the very first paragraph I read that morning said “We know now that a broken heart is not the end of the world, but a beginning.”

A little reassurance that I picked the right word. And so here I am. Beginning this new project, I wanted a space to write my truths, a space that was just ME and not me as a Mama. A space I could feel free to be who I am, unashamedly, proudly. A place I can write and explore the world, as I venture out on this new path. A space to document this new beginning.