I have had the practice of choosing a word of the year for a while now. I find it is a worthwhile reflection for me to look forward at a new expanse of time and frame it not so much with a long lists of goals and intentions, but a single touch point that I can come back to when I begin to feel untethered and the world feels out of focus. In the past I have chosen light, explore, unbridled, and words I no longer recall. What I do recall is the benefit I found in the anchoring power of those words. This year, I feel like I did less searching and pondering. My word came to my early, mid-November. And it was as if it adopted me rather than me choosing it. It just sort of barged into my consciousness and claimed me as its own. My word for the year in 2023 is DESIRE.
I have been rather committed to exploring my Human Design profile for the last few months and learning what it has to teach me about myself and how I best function in the world. My profile is very heavy on the idea that my guiding forces in life are my gut instinct and intuitions. My life’s path is revealed by my body’s response to a proposition: a full-bodied “yes” is a “yes”, anything less is a “no”. I have made a commitment to pay more attention to my gut, and to listen to myself when my body tells me what it wants.
I am on a learning curve here. In my marriage and motherhood and faith life over the last few decades, I have adopted the mindset that we should not trust our wants, that our longings and desires guide us down a path of selfishness and lead us away from all that is good and holy. Denying yourself is the way to heaven. While there is obviously a level of self-denial that is healthy and natural, somehow I think we as women drink an overdose of this message in our patriarchal culture. We become surrounded by the notion that our wanting is somehow inappropriate. That we are not worthy to want. That our desires are the seeds of our moral downfall.
Taking a close look at that subconscious guilt and unearthing it to turn it over in my hands and really see it made me realize I wanted my right to want back. I have become pretty comfortable with the idea that my needs are important and I have to have them met to be able to serve others well. That is now a given in my life. But over the course of the coming year, I am going to work toward giving myself permission to want things, not because they are necessary for my survival, but because I desire them, for the purpose of pleasure or joy or fun. I am going to rebel against the demonization of feminine desire.
I’m going to dig into learning to trust myself, to listening to what my body is telling me about the options that are presented to me, and to embracing my wantings and my longings with purpose and passion. I am going to work to unlearn my distrust of my own desire, to remove the chatterboxes in my head that tell me I am dangerous to myself, and that wanting more than you need leads to frivolity and foolishness. I mean, maybe I’ll even invite a little frivolity and foolishness into my life to see where it might take me.
I want to walk further into my freedom this year and part of that is unshackling myself from beliefs and ways of being that have taught me that I am not to be trusted with myself. This, I think, is a tactic that has kept women from stepping into the fullness of their own power, fear of that power itself. It has been labeled magic and witchcraft and now, a more tame but no less paralyzing notion, self-serving and egotistic. And apparently serving ourselves is not what women should be about. If we are not looking outward toward duty and responsibility for our worth, we are not being womanly.
Well, this is the year I declare differently. I will continue to serve others as I always have, but I will reserve the right to serve myself as well. I will want and I will ask and I will long for and I will desire. And I will welcome these as signals I am sending to myself about what will make me whole and well and powerful as I walk through the world. When I researched the etymology of the word “desire”, the final thought provided was that perhaps the word was most closely related to the idea “to await what the stars will bring.” Perfection.
This is the year I will send the longings of my heart out in to the universe and await what the stars will bring.
Did you choose a word for the year? How’s it going so far? Tell me all about it!