Here's to A Year of Abundance with Freedom and Flow in supporting roles
New Year's Resolutions, a word of the year, intentions, or an invitation to rest from expectations...whatever calls to you as we say goodbye 2023 and hello 2024, embrace your intuition.
From the age of ten I have faithfully kept a diary of some kind. At first they were those small locked diaries that my mother always remembered to give me at Hanukkah. And on January 1, I would earnestly write my ten New Year’s Resolutions on the inside cover. I don’t recall why I had ten. It must have struck me as a good number, substantial but not show-offy. My bonus resolution to “write in my diary every day” remains today, although now it’s morning pages or at the minimum, a snippet of a thought, feeling or observation quickly captured in a notebook or an audio note. The need to channel what I am witnessing and experiencing through language is as true today as it was 52 years ago.
And so is the beginner’s mind that likes to mark the bloom of a new year by planting seeds for what that harvest might yield in the 12 months to come. Translated from the original word, Shoshin, which comes from Zen Buddhism, with beginner’s mind you look at every situation as if it’s the first time you are seeing it.
When the year is fresh and new, so is my desire to reflect on the past year in order to sow rich, fertile ground for the new year—to be filled with possibility, to see everything anew. Ready to grow, thrive, and bloom in a thousand unknowable ways.
For me, 2023 was a tumultuous year. A year of endings and beginnings, as I reflected last week. I began the year mired in the tension of divorce proceedings and ended it with a comfortable friendship with my ex. I began the year overwhelmed by what seemed like an endless stretch of solo, full-time live-in caregiving for my mother with dementia. It ended with my mother living in a memory care facility, ensuring she could be well cared for without sacrificing my own possibility for new beginnings.
I ended the year quietly, a solitary New Year’s Eve, lights out by nine o’clock. I was exhausted by a move from a house I had shared with Mom to a nearby one-bedroom apartment, lugging belongings up and down three flights of stairs. My defenses low, my immune system weak, I caught a bad cold that had me curled under my duvet with my bedside tray, sipping tea, blowing my nose and grateful to Jenny Jackson for writing the wonderfully entertaining and captivating novel Pineapple Street. I think this was meant to be the 51st book I began in 2023.
I am sure I not the only woman who only finds herself truly resting when she’s too sick to do anything else. I can’t remember the last time I spent the day in pajamas, curled up in bed, doing nothing “productive.” So when I read the reflections of guest columnist
on on creative rest I knew I had met a kindred soul.Sarah writes: “Creative rest also extends to giving ourselves the freedom to daydream—fostering a sense of curiosity and creativity without the pressure of productivity—leading to a greater capacity to solve problems or make decisions. It’s a tonic for those who regularly need to tap into their energy, ingenuity and resources.”
My body’s demand to rest—finally—has given me the opportunity to sit back and reflect. How did I want to mark this passing of the torch from 2023 to 2024? I knew that it wouldn’t be my younger self’s dedication to new year’s resolutions. They had long ago become a zero-sum game; either I did what I resolved to do or I didn’t, and if invariably, I didn’t keep my resolution, I felt like a failure.
Instead, a few years ago, I came around to the concept of choosing a word of the year. In 2023, it was manifest. And what a year it was to embody that word. I manifested the bravest, boldest decision of my life in ending my long marriage. I manifested a freedom for myself in recognizing that a good daughter cares for her mother and herself. Those were the two main ways I inhabited that word in 2023 but there were so many others—so many leaps of faith in myself and my ability to live more truthfully.
On the path to finding my Word of the Year for 2024 I had the good fortune to come across the generous, big-hearted
of the Substack The Unraveled Heart and her Word of the Year workshop. I spent the five days leading up to the workshop journaling prompts from her Word of the Year workbook, like capturing your ideal day, the dreams you want to nurture in the new year, the areas in your life you want supported, the qualities you want to develop in yourself and what your heart needs.I was gratified to see that many of the elements of my ideal day were already integrated into my life this past year, from the early morning pre-dawn awakenings to journal, mediate, do gentle yoga movement and work on my novel, to get outside and walk every day, ideally by the ocean. I saw however that an ideal week would contain entire days immersed in the world of my fiction writing, not an hour or two hours skimmed off the top before I did the “real work” of my life. I began to envision the possibility of taking two weekdays for being immersed in the novel along with weekends.
I know that 2024 will bring travel: in March, to the Big Island of Hawaii for the annual yoga therapy retreat of my friend and incredible yoga therapist Michelle Andrie with a stopover on the way home to Palm Springs to see a dear friend; in the summer, to see friends and family in Stockholm, and my daughters in Paris and Barcelona, and in early fall, to walk the Camino de Santiago with my oldest daughter and hopefully, its final leg with my youngest daughter. Arizona, Vermont and even Chile might also appear on 2024’s travel schedule by the time it all plays out.
When Susannah asked, “What do you hope will happen in 2024?”, travel topped the list (which seems assured) as well as continuing to grow this community of subscribers to Living in 3D, and finding a publisher for my novel, the one I’ve been working on steadily for a little over two years. I think the book is nearly full baked. As my fabulous developmental editor Deana Luchia of Write to The End tells me, the edits I am doing now are just the icing on the cake. So a tender but determined hope is that an agent or publisher will ask for the whole cake once they’ve tasted a slice.
Spending time with my hopes and dreams and desires had all kinds of words tumbling onto the pages of my journal, like balanced, serene, present, embodied, strength, connection, clarity, align, purpose, peaceful, wisdom. But none felt exactly right until I landed on:
ABUNDANCE
And I felt a resounding YES, like a clear bell ringing inside me. For two years now I had been aware of and pushing against scarcity thinking. Too much water under the bridge to let go of this marriage. Too little time left to live the kind of life I envisioned for myself. Too little talent to match my ambition. Too little determination to bring my dreams to fruition. Too many people I needed to take care of. Too little time for myself. Too much not-enoughness crowding my brain, straining my heart and diminishing my hope.
Abundance is the antidote to scarcity. It is what has always been available to me, if only I dare to raise up my arms and grab it. As Walt Whitman writes, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” And when one feels abundant, one contains multitudes. Anything is possible, all states of being, every dream, every hope, every yearning. Time becomes almost meaningless.
With abundance in the starring role of my Word of the Year, FREEDOM and FLOW take on supporting roles. When I believe that I possess abundant qualities of whatever I need, that the world itself is abundant, there is a natural flow to my actions and decisions and that leads to a sense of freedom, of a river flowing abundantly and freely (as the Latin origin of the word suggests: abundantia, or overflowing).
With these three words now guiding me, I spent a magical couple of hours in a New Year’s Eve workshop with a hundred other souls, hosted by poet, author, and teacher Elena Brower who writes the beautiful
. She led us through a selection of prompts and conversation and reflections from Zen Buddhism, incuding the three minds of zen: a joyful mind, an elder’s mind and a great mind. In Zen, body, heart, mind, and the environment are not separate. But when Elena asked us which mind spoke most deeply to us, for me, it was the joyful heart-mind.As Jisho Sara Siebert writes in The Lion’s Roar:
Able to deeply sit with the impermanent, unsatisfactory, painful, and non-joyful elements of experience, a joyful heart–mind welcomes the moment as it is. Free of the static that comes when we are constantly comparing this moment to “perfection,” the joyful heart–mind is free to find ways to cultivate the conditions of joy for all beings.
Comparison is the cousin of scarcity—and abundance nudges them right out the door.
In Elena’s workshop, I realized that abundance dances with joy and delight, two states of being I have dearly missed in this heavy past year. Joyful heart-mind offers the contentment of the present moment, no matter what comes my way in 2024.
I will be continuing to dig for the insights of 2023 and the possible blooms of the new year through the Goodbye Hello journal that
recommended in her Substack
.
If neither resolutions or a word for the year is for you, consider my friend and writer
‘s practice of an “alphabet atlas” of the year ahead, 26 words that describe what she wants to feel or do in the new year. Brilliant! Check it out. If abundance with her ladies-in-waiting freedom and flow should at some point in the year stop filling me with delight, I might go searching for others to fill my dance card.Or there’s
of The Isolation Journals “The Five Lists,” describing what she’s proud of doing in the past year, what she’s yearning for, what’s causing anxiety, what new resources and practices can support her, and finally, unleashing her wildest dreams. I love lists and these seem abundantly joyful and restorative to write.Another rich practice is setting intentions, recommended by my friend Cathy Struecker of Cairn Yoga & Wellness, with the wonderful podcast Health, Harmony & Happiness with Cathy, who offers an annual intention-setting worksheet, guided by the values most important to you.
And if what calls to you is rest—rest from resolutions, word searches, intentions—that’s okay, too. I am abundantly ready for a nap right now, continuing the practice of The Radical Art of Rest I wrote about last year.
Happy new year and happy whatever fills your well!
Questions to ponder: Do you make new year’s resolutions, choose a word of the year or set intentions or have some other practice to set the tone of the year? I’d love it if you shared in the comments.
For paid subscribers, there is no voice-over of this article recorded by me this week because of my cold. Believe me, you don’t want to listen to my voice right now!
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3 Songs for Living in 3D
Divorce
“Paris, Texas” Lana Del Rey
When you know, you know
It's time, it's time to go
Dementia
“Long Ago and Far Away,” James Taylor
Dreaming the dreams I've dreamed, my friend
Loving the love I love
Destiny
“Kinder,” Copper Wimmin
I've decided to be open
To that little voice inside
Telling me I'm beautiful
Its ok to be alive
I've decided to be kinder
To myself when I feel sad
I've decided to be grateful
For all I ever had
Thank you Kristin! Love your 5 ‘C’s! And your letter to yourself idea. Borrowing! I would love to see you bring Kintsugi and your other wonderful offerings to more people this year too!💗
Loved hearing about all these ways of honoring the rhythm of the transition from the old year to new year. And thanks for the shout out.
My word for the year is "bold." I am bold is the statement I want to live out, and what I want to remind myself of by embodying boldness is that I'm choosing abundance instead of avoidance💜.