Allison, I loved this. How perfect STAY is for you, and really, for me, too, for so many of us. Loved your list of permissions and omissions and I will take inspiration from it this coming year. While I am quite literally leaving for a new country, I need to remember to stay with myself in my new surroundings and as new relationships and friendships form. I've worked hard to get to where I am today in knowing and loving myself. Barcelona will add a sheen to that, I hope, but it doesn't need to fill me up in that way because I'm already home, inside myself.
As for me: I am in the midst of picking a word for 2025, and am doing a workshopping/journaling discovery practice with my daughter this weekend to see what emerges.
As for words I feel called to remove this year, one would be Discipline. Another would be Rules. And Success. Such a bright, irritating, in-your-face word. What does it mean, anyway, to have success, to be successful? Society has written the Rules for Success and they all seem to involve Discipline. So I guess I am headed toward being a joyful, free and happy failure--LOL. Naaah, not that either. How about Disciple? Much better. A joyful, free and happy Disciple. A wistful (and maybe sometimes wise) wanderer. Now you've got me playing with words. Thanks for getting me started, my friend.
Ah, my favorite pastime. Playing with words! Thanks for taking that bait 😊
I love how you are stepping into your new home in a new country with the knowledge that you are already home, inside yourself. I can’t wait to read all about your new adventures in the coming year.
Enjoy the journaling this weekend. That’s a fun process. I’ll stay tuned to see where you land.
I also have an aversion to the word success. Throw it in the word trash bin.
I love wistful wanderer. Yes to a year of that!
I keep getting pulled towards the word mystic. The history of mysticism and what it means to be an everyday, ordinary modern mystic. The work of Mirabai Starr has lit me up that way (as well as Richard Rohr who I adore).
It sounds like it’s going to be a year of staying with our wistful wandering ways, my friend!
What a lovely rejoinder to my conversational gambit above. I purchased Richard Rohr's Falling Upwards at your suggestion and it is a top read for 2025. Thank you! I am also curious about Mirabai Starr and yes, mysticism is fascinating. "A year of staying with our wistful wandering ways," here's me raising my glass of n/a bubbly to that!
"Your soul already knows the answer, to all your questions. You just have to be quiet enough to hear the whispers and brave enough to follow them." The Universe
I know this so deeply and still, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, the quiet is the first thing to go. Next is the gym!! It's always so interesting, these choices we make . . .
My word for 2025 is Balance. For me, balance applies to all areas of my life, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. There's a story behind this choice that I'm not quite ready to share but my word choice is a big one for me!
As always, thank you for sharing your heart Allison. Your words and the feelings they evoke in me always ring true, feel right and sooth me. XOXOXO
Jane - thanks for always sharing what resonates here. I appreciate you.
And yeah, yeah me too: “when I'm feeling overwhelmed, the quiet is the first thing to go.” It’s so interesting because rationally we understand that to quiet the monkey mind and quell the overwhelm, we need to be still and quiet. Yet we propel around from this thing to that. It is wild.
It helps knowing we’re no unique that way, though!
I’m ready to hear the whispers. 💜
Wishing you a serene year full of balanced mind, body, soul & spirit, my friend.
Yes, stay!! ❤️ love this. Let’s imagine all the self help has done it’s work, and be content with ourselves. I will try, but I do have one more improvement I’d like to make in the new year, and it’s the amount of times I say “like” in conversation. That’s not even a joke.
Love your word for the year, “stay.” I’m thinking about my year ahead and where my hopes are. Coming up on a recovery birthday is always a moment, too, to keep returning to what is true or discovering that Word in our hearts again. 🙏🏼
It’s funny - I have cherished and protected my solitude for a while now thinking it was me being quiet with me. Yet, 95% of the time I’m in “solitude”, I’ve got earbuds blasting someone else’s words in my ears or I’m reading someone else’s content. I love being inspired by other creatives AND I also am realizing that I need to lower the outside volume to truly hear what it is I need/want.
Woohoo! Yes, maybe we get to the point where after we’ve been there and done that there’s no one else to turn to but ourselves. We collected the data and now it’s time to listen and sit with it. Come home to what’s true for us… aka stay! 🤍
In early sobriety, well, in early sobriety community, when I was truly learning how to get and stay sober (not just not drink), STAY was one of three words I thought I might tattoo on my wrist to remind me of a similar desire -to stay with myself, to stay with the feeling I was wanting to escape and sometimes to stay at my job or in whatever current relationship I was in.
Love the less/more-been thinking so much the same. Less doing, more being is what I long for.
I am not big on choosing words of the year because I am fickle and in flux, but I do enjoy contemplating one in order to get some focus. I want to face my fears this year: fear of intimacy, abandonment, my divorce, my finances-blech. So, would FACE be my word? Fear? hmm...still pondering....thank you for always giving me plenty to ponder, Allison...
also, that clip of your Dad...GAH, big hugs to you. The memories are such a bittersweet beast, no?
In honour of the beautiful vulnerability with which you share with us all, I'm going to be vulnerable with you too, and share my word for 2025, as uncomfortable as this word makes me!
The word was the first to come up in one of those "The first four words you see are your mantra for 2025" word searches. I believe in those things in the same way that I believe in tarot cards or the iChing or any other kinds of divination... I believe that they give you a different way of looking at things, and a perspective that you might not otherwise have considered.
The first word that came up for me was MONEY.
God it makes me squirm!
I have a terrible relationship with money. I feel incredibly grateful that my husband has earned enough of it for us to be able to live comfortably, but after 15 years of living in countries where I've not been allowed to work, I have huge blocks around earning it myself. But now my husband has retired and it's time for me to start supporting the family, so it's time for me to set those blocks to one side!
In 2025, I'm going to STAY in and with myself, just as you are. (Isn't it wonderful to have come to the place where you know that this is the best and most magical place to be?!). And part of the self in which I'll stay will concentrate on knowing and appreciating that it's OK to get paid for my work. It's OK to accept money from the friends for whom I would happily do photoshoots for free, so that I can afford to buy the equipment and invest in courses to keep improving my skills. It's OK to accept sponsorship from sustainable companies that wish to assist me in bringing meaningful conversations to the world through my podcast. It's OK to admit that words like abundance and generosity resonate with me more than words like "budget", a word that gives me the ick too!
Congratulations, Allison, on the beautiful generosity with which you've shared yourself, your words and your thoughts during 2024. I'm staying with your writing, keen to see what you'll bring to the world in the New Year! 💕
Thank you, Michelle! For this deep and heart sourced response. It means so much to me.
And - you’re speaking my language!!! I have such a twisted up relationship with money and there are many blocks in my way, too. I appreciate your vulnerability with this - it’s a hard thing to talk about and dig up /expose. I’ve been journaling a lot about it actually. I have a pattern of outsourcing- giving my earnings away almost as quickly as I receive it. I finally can see that what I am telling money is - “I don’t trust you. Or, I don’t trust myself with you so I will pass you along.” In a messed up way, I’m abusing my money. Not honoring it. It sounds so hippy dippy (an expression my dad loved to say!) but it feels true. It feels like a breakthrough and it is something I’ll be exploring in 2025. I want to be in relationship with money - not drain it or use it frivolously.
So much to unpack. Thank you for going there and pulling the thread on that on. This helps me. 🫶
Happy New Year, Michelle! I’m so excited to see where your writing, photography and podcasting takes you. A hat trick of creative pursuits that look so good on you!🌟
Thank you Allison this is relevant and resonates with me ! 🌈
Just last week,my bestie/mentor/sponsor told me to let go of all of the self-help ....that I already knew everything I needed to know.
The "stay" idea spoke to me so I ran with it:
I'm going to have a staycation with myself ❤️
I will stay true to myself
I will stay in the moment
I will stay still
I will stay to dance
I will stay through the storm
I will stay strong
I will stay humble
I will stay novel
I will stay wild
I will stay curious
I will stay loving
I will stay sweet
I will stay sober
I will stay -I like the company 😉
Yes to one long year of a staycation. I love that, April! Thank you for sharing. I love how you unfolded this here.
“I will stay sober. I will stay - I like the company.” Ahhh, yes! 💕💕
"Less scrolling, more strolling" should be printed on a t-shirt.
Let’s get them printed!!! 👚👚🙌🏻🙌🏻
YES! I’m in. And I’d wear it all the time!
Allison, I loved this. How perfect STAY is for you, and really, for me, too, for so many of us. Loved your list of permissions and omissions and I will take inspiration from it this coming year. While I am quite literally leaving for a new country, I need to remember to stay with myself in my new surroundings and as new relationships and friendships form. I've worked hard to get to where I am today in knowing and loving myself. Barcelona will add a sheen to that, I hope, but it doesn't need to fill me up in that way because I'm already home, inside myself.
As for me: I am in the midst of picking a word for 2025, and am doing a workshopping/journaling discovery practice with my daughter this weekend to see what emerges.
As for words I feel called to remove this year, one would be Discipline. Another would be Rules. And Success. Such a bright, irritating, in-your-face word. What does it mean, anyway, to have success, to be successful? Society has written the Rules for Success and they all seem to involve Discipline. So I guess I am headed toward being a joyful, free and happy failure--LOL. Naaah, not that either. How about Disciple? Much better. A joyful, free and happy Disciple. A wistful (and maybe sometimes wise) wanderer. Now you've got me playing with words. Thanks for getting me started, my friend.
Ah, my favorite pastime. Playing with words! Thanks for taking that bait 😊
I love how you are stepping into your new home in a new country with the knowledge that you are already home, inside yourself. I can’t wait to read all about your new adventures in the coming year.
Enjoy the journaling this weekend. That’s a fun process. I’ll stay tuned to see where you land.
I also have an aversion to the word success. Throw it in the word trash bin.
I love wistful wanderer. Yes to a year of that!
I keep getting pulled towards the word mystic. The history of mysticism and what it means to be an everyday, ordinary modern mystic. The work of Mirabai Starr has lit me up that way (as well as Richard Rohr who I adore).
It sounds like it’s going to be a year of staying with our wistful wandering ways, my friend!
What a lovely rejoinder to my conversational gambit above. I purchased Richard Rohr's Falling Upwards at your suggestion and it is a top read for 2025. Thank you! I am also curious about Mirabai Starr and yes, mysticism is fascinating. "A year of staying with our wistful wandering ways," here's me raising my glass of n/a bubbly to that!
Yes to staying. ❤️
Stay until the magic appears. ❤️
Thanks for being here, Priscilla.
This spoke to me just the other day ~
"Your soul already knows the answer, to all your questions. You just have to be quiet enough to hear the whispers and brave enough to follow them." The Universe
I know this so deeply and still, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, the quiet is the first thing to go. Next is the gym!! It's always so interesting, these choices we make . . .
My word for 2025 is Balance. For me, balance applies to all areas of my life, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. There's a story behind this choice that I'm not quite ready to share but my word choice is a big one for me!
As always, thank you for sharing your heart Allison. Your words and the feelings they evoke in me always ring true, feel right and sooth me. XOXOXO
Jane - thanks for always sharing what resonates here. I appreciate you.
And yeah, yeah me too: “when I'm feeling overwhelmed, the quiet is the first thing to go.” It’s so interesting because rationally we understand that to quiet the monkey mind and quell the overwhelm, we need to be still and quiet. Yet we propel around from this thing to that. It is wild.
It helps knowing we’re no unique that way, though!
I’m ready to hear the whispers. 💜
Wishing you a serene year full of balanced mind, body, soul & spirit, my friend.
I'm hear for all of this!
"I don't need more outside information. I don't need any more experts to tell me how to further develop myself. I need to inhabit myself."
We might have been sipping the same stuff because my piece this Sunday is on the same idea.
Sipping the same stuff - from our creative juice mugs!!! 🫶
I love that and can’t wait to read it Jamal!
Yes, stay!! ❤️ love this. Let’s imagine all the self help has done it’s work, and be content with ourselves. I will try, but I do have one more improvement I’d like to make in the new year, and it’s the amount of times I say “like” in conversation. That’s not even a joke.
I’m guilty of that, too! I blame the era we grew up in 🙃
Here’s to trusting that our selves have been adequately helped!
This speaks to me so much…. Slowing and paying attention here.. yes, thank you.. Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to you, too Nancy! Thanks for popping in here. Let’s slowly roll into 2025.
Woman. Well said and thank you endlessly: "Less urgency, more agency."
Thank YOU, Elena. The what else can we stop doing felt like a major seismic shift for me. 🙏🏼
Thank you for sharing. I love your word for the year and the meaning behind it. And I loved the poem of your list at the end. Spectacular!
Thanks Katie. I loved hearing about your word, too. Elevate.
Words can do that, right?!?!
I’m excited to see where both of us go in the year ahead!
Beautiful, Allison. And what a perfect ending with your daughter’s sweet words and star! ❤️
Thanks Dana. She sure does light up my life ❤️🌟
Love your word for the year, “stay.” I’m thinking about my year ahead and where my hopes are. Coming up on a recovery birthday is always a moment, too, to keep returning to what is true or discovering that Word in our hearts again. 🙏🏼
Those recovery birthdays are big moments. I feel that, my sober bday soul sista! 1/2!!! 🙌🏻🙌🏻💜
“To keep returning to what is true”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
I missed the stars last week but I think it’s perfect for this week too. My wish for all of us peaceful survival and joy
Amen to that, Susan. May we all survive with peace and joy. In our hearts and in our world.
I appreciate you sharing this here 🫶
My word for 2025: Authenticity. Less experts and going within to find our own truth really resonates 😃
I love that - authenticity is pulling at me, too.
It’s funny - I have cherished and protected my solitude for a while now thinking it was me being quiet with me. Yet, 95% of the time I’m in “solitude”, I’ve got earbuds blasting someone else’s words in my ears or I’m reading someone else’s content. I love being inspired by other creatives AND I also am realizing that I need to lower the outside volume to truly hear what it is I need/want.
Here’s to an authentic 2025.
Thanks for sharing here ✨
Woohoo! Yes, maybe we get to the point where after we’ve been there and done that there’s no one else to turn to but ourselves. We collected the data and now it’s time to listen and sit with it. Come home to what’s true for us… aka stay! 🤍
Yes!!!
In early sobriety, well, in early sobriety community, when I was truly learning how to get and stay sober (not just not drink), STAY was one of three words I thought I might tattoo on my wrist to remind me of a similar desire -to stay with myself, to stay with the feeling I was wanting to escape and sometimes to stay at my job or in whatever current relationship I was in.
Love the less/more-been thinking so much the same. Less doing, more being is what I long for.
I am not big on choosing words of the year because I am fickle and in flux, but I do enjoy contemplating one in order to get some focus. I want to face my fears this year: fear of intimacy, abandonment, my divorce, my finances-blech. So, would FACE be my word? Fear? hmm...still pondering....thank you for always giving me plenty to ponder, Allison...
also, that clip of your Dad...GAH, big hugs to you. The memories are such a bittersweet beast, no?
In flux - yeah, that tracks for me. I get it. I am beginning to think/learn, unlearn and learn again that being in flux is the whole gig. Ugh!
Fear is a bitch, she has been showing up for me too, lately.
I'm grateful to have you here, walking the sober path and nodding along letting me know you understand what I mean. xoxoxo. Happy New Year Rosemary!
This is so beautiful, Allison!
In honour of the beautiful vulnerability with which you share with us all, I'm going to be vulnerable with you too, and share my word for 2025, as uncomfortable as this word makes me!
The word was the first to come up in one of those "The first four words you see are your mantra for 2025" word searches. I believe in those things in the same way that I believe in tarot cards or the iChing or any other kinds of divination... I believe that they give you a different way of looking at things, and a perspective that you might not otherwise have considered.
The first word that came up for me was MONEY.
God it makes me squirm!
I have a terrible relationship with money. I feel incredibly grateful that my husband has earned enough of it for us to be able to live comfortably, but after 15 years of living in countries where I've not been allowed to work, I have huge blocks around earning it myself. But now my husband has retired and it's time for me to start supporting the family, so it's time for me to set those blocks to one side!
In 2025, I'm going to STAY in and with myself, just as you are. (Isn't it wonderful to have come to the place where you know that this is the best and most magical place to be?!). And part of the self in which I'll stay will concentrate on knowing and appreciating that it's OK to get paid for my work. It's OK to accept money from the friends for whom I would happily do photoshoots for free, so that I can afford to buy the equipment and invest in courses to keep improving my skills. It's OK to accept sponsorship from sustainable companies that wish to assist me in bringing meaningful conversations to the world through my podcast. It's OK to admit that words like abundance and generosity resonate with me more than words like "budget", a word that gives me the ick too!
Congratulations, Allison, on the beautiful generosity with which you've shared yourself, your words and your thoughts during 2024. I'm staying with your writing, keen to see what you'll bring to the world in the New Year! 💕
Thank you, Michelle! For this deep and heart sourced response. It means so much to me.
And - you’re speaking my language!!! I have such a twisted up relationship with money and there are many blocks in my way, too. I appreciate your vulnerability with this - it’s a hard thing to talk about and dig up /expose. I’ve been journaling a lot about it actually. I have a pattern of outsourcing- giving my earnings away almost as quickly as I receive it. I finally can see that what I am telling money is - “I don’t trust you. Or, I don’t trust myself with you so I will pass you along.” In a messed up way, I’m abusing my money. Not honoring it. It sounds so hippy dippy (an expression my dad loved to say!) but it feels true. It feels like a breakthrough and it is something I’ll be exploring in 2025. I want to be in relationship with money - not drain it or use it frivolously.
So much to unpack. Thank you for going there and pulling the thread on that on. This helps me. 🫶
Happy New Year, Michelle! I’m so excited to see where your writing, photography and podcasting takes you. A hat trick of creative pursuits that look so good on you!🌟